Curve Ball #1

I was making really good progress on the raffle quilt.  Really, I was.  As I've probably mentioned, I am making a raffle quilt for the Knights of Columbus international convention, which is going to be held in Philadelphia this August. I'm making it in Red, White and Blue. Each block is the same basic 8 inch star but the fabrics, placement of the colors and the centers are different for each one.  I'm going to make one block for each jurisdiction where the Knights are active.  The idea is to convey the fact that all the jurisdictions are equal, but different.  Up until about a week ago, there were 72 jurisdictions.  Easy, right? Nine times eight is 72, so, I planned a quilt that would be 64 X 72 before borders.  A week ago is when the curve ball arrived.  

My dear husband nonchalantly mentioned that one of the jurisdictions had been split into two. WHAT????  Now what the heck am I going to do? Seventy-three is not an exactly an easy number to work with!!!  He looked at me like I had gone crazy.  I guess I really did go a little off the deep end...

That night I was trying to figure out possible layouts and thought that the only answer would be to use a diagonal setting, since the rows are offset and usually add up to an odd number. It seemed that I could up with everything BUT 73!   Doing all that math before going to bed was not a good idea.  I had nightmares all night long about diagonal settings, adding numbers together wrong, wonky angles and an end product that looked really, really stupid.  I thought about making one of the blocks a label and putting it on the back, but then I figured that someone could be offended because they might think that I thought one of the jurisdictions wasn't good enough to be on the front.  Sigh.  

After another two days of angst and two more sleepless nights, a reasonable solution finally came to me!  I am going to do a 9x9 straight setting, and use eight blank 'filler' blocks!  So the first row will be 9 stars, the second will be 7 stars and two fillers, etc. until the last row is 9 blocks again.  Once I have all the blocks done, I'll figure out where exactly the fillers fit in best.  I'm thinking probably on the ends of the 7 block rows, but now that the big problem is solved, that will be a minor issue!