You've GOT TO be kidding me!

In my last post (which I wrote at the end of May, but forgot to publish until today - oops, my bad!) I mentioned the fact that my husband and I drove up to Connecticut for a week at the beginning of June. We needed to be in New Haven at the home office of the Knights of Columbus because he works for them, and there were meetings all week.  While we were there, I mentioned to some people that I was making a raffle quilt for the  International Convention, which is going to be in Philadelphia this August. I plan to have one block for each jurisdiction, and each block will be the same size and overall outline, but each one will be unique.  This is to represent the fact that each jurisdiction is equal to the others, but each is also unique.  Since the convention will be in Philadelphia, I'm making a scrappy red, white and blue quilt, with eight inch modified Sawtooth Star blocks.


I also told the story of how they added a new jurisdiction last month, which caused me no end of sleepless nights while I figured out how to set 73 blocks, as opposed to 72.  72 is so nice and even - 8 by 9, straight set, no problems! <sigh>.

Anyway, I did finally figure out how to set the 73 blocks.  I was planning to set them 9 by 9, and have a blank white block on the end of every other row.  So there would be 9 star blocks in the top row, 7 in the next row (with two blanks on either end), 9 in row 3, 7 in row 4, etc. until the last row, which would have 9 blocks again.  Here is a picture of that layout:

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but the blank blocks would go on the sides, where my design wall (a.k.a. living room carpet) is showing through. 

Did you notice that I said 'WAS planning', and 'would go'? <Big, BIG, sigh>.  On Sunday morning, there was a breakfast meeting, and the speaker mentioned that there were 74 jurisdictions. WHAT??? Did I hear him correctly?  Did he make a mistake?  Surely, he meant 73, right?  

I followed up with him after the meeting. He didn't make a mistake.  They decided to split one jurisdiction in half because it was so big.  So for the fraternal year 2015-2016, there are 74 jurisdictions.  Which means I need to come up with a setting for 74 blocks.  AAAARRRRGH! 

The only good thing about an 8 hour drive back home from New Haven is that it gave me LOTS of time to come up with a new setting.  So by the time I got home, I had a couple of options and was able to sleep that night! Here is the one I decided to use:  

The center and the two missing blocks on each side will be blue 'blank' squares, for which I''ll probably use some of the border fabric for consistency.  Then I'll fill the diagonals with white side square triangles.  So this is IT!!!  If they add another jurisdiction, too bad, so sad!  I absolutely have to get this done by the end of the month, because July will be busy with traveling and the convention is the first week of August!!