When I was a child, I loved building with blocks and working jigsaw puzzles.

My mother likes to say that nothing much has changed, except that now, I design my own puzzles and then make the pieces I need to solve them; this certainly seems to be true of my 2012 North Carolina State Fair project.

Last Friday I took an inventory of some of the pieces I had made — large textured squares, large textured triangles, and the multi-colored motifs — and over the past few days as I have grappled with other crochet projects, I have continued to make the pieces I need for this larger project.

One thing I learned from taking the inventory was that I was that I had a good stock of more subdued colors, as I am basing this year’s project on the photo of Amish quilt I found in The World of Amish Quilts.

In addition to making a project worthy of state fair level competition, I want to embrace the scrap aesthetic and use what materials I have on hand. While I am including more colors than what would be in a traditional Amish palette, I am hoping that when all is said and done, I have successfully conveyed that joy that is inherent in the work of the Amish.

To that end I finished four additional large textured squares:

The center square of one of the multi-colored motifs:

eight more small textured squares (to be used in the multi-color motif):

and eight textured rectangles (also to be used in the multi-color motif):

At the moment, I think I know where I am going with this project. I imagine that all that stands between me and the finished project is for me to finish the necessary pieces, join them, and then add a border.

Experience has taught me, however, that despite the fact that I seem to know exactly where I am going, and how I am going to get there, there is a strong likelihood that I will learn something else along the way that I didn’t even know I needed to learn.