Sometimes a craftswoman has complete control over her yarn, and sometimes her yarn has complete control over her. This project has clearly turned out to be the latter.

Before I began this project, I thought I had it all figured out.

I had made this motif:

and had every intention of making 168 more.

Then, I was going to arrange them all in an array of 13 x 13 motif squares. But something happened along the way.

The first something that happened was this:

When I first made this second motif, I envisioned making 83 more of this motif and cutting back to a total of 85 for the first motif; I would then arrange them in the same 13 x 13 motif array, but alternating the second motif with the first.

Instead, I ended up expanding the second motif until it became the central element of my 2011 North Carolina State Fair project:

This project has its own course that it is charting, so I was not the least bit surprised when, at yesterday’s trumpet lesson, I could finally “see” what this project was going to look like when it was completed, and it will quite different from the project I first set out to make.

In order to bring the project to a close, I am making yet another motif. Like the Bauhaus quilt block III, it begins with a 1 x 1 square:

surrounded by four 1 x 2 rectangles:

which are then joined to the center square:

From there, an additional four 1 x 4 rectangles are made:

and are then joined to the central motif to form a 5 unit x 5 unit square:

With just 13 days left to work on this project, I am hoping that it has nothing else to say.

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