Nearly Insane Blocks 23 & 41

I have been posting here so scarcely lately because I'm so hooked on my Nearly Insane quilt, and mostly I post those blocks on the Nearly Insane Fans blog. But I have had a few requests from readers here to see more of the blocks, so with a lack of anything else to post, I've cut-and-pasted the same blog entry here for you to see. This quilt has really drawn me in, and I'm having such fun working on it.

**For readers not familiar with the Nearly Insane quilt, it's a reproduction of a quilt from the 1870's. Each of the blocks is 6" finished, and some of them have as many as 200 pieces in them. The quilt truly deserves it's "Nearly Insane" status. **

Here are a couple of my recent blocks. The pink one was the last one I needed to add the fifth row to my quilt top.

This is block 23 - love the pink fabric. The thin red pieces were fun to work with - they're 3/8" finished, so seam allowances were so important. Even being a little bit out meant the strips looked too small or large. I did unpick a couple of pieces for accuracy.

This basket is block 41 - and it was fun to have a bit of applique to play with. I love needle turn applique, so that was the technique I used. I was fretting that the triangles weren't lined up well enough in the basket, but it doesn't really show so much. Overall it's a very cute block.