Macro is a thing

After happily clicking along taking lots of pictures of the 365 Challenge blocks as I worked on them, I realized that I'd taken my camera out of macro mode when we went to the zoo, and hadn't reset it.  (Since most of my camera work is close-up stuff, I tend to use macro as the default.  This works great as long as I don't go to zoos.)
So bear with the first few pictures, as they're a bit blurry.  I just don't want to remake that first block in order to get clearer photos, since it took me the better part of a morning to make it in the first place.

When I first saw this block in the email, I gasped and said something along the lines of "Are you kidding me?!?'  (Not my exact words, but I usually try to keep this blog G-rated.) (Usually.)
Because we've been merrily running along making 3" blocks for the last 3 months, and this

is what presented itself as the next block.  Luckily, before I had a complete meltdown, I saw that this was a SIX inch block rather than a three inch one.  Whew!  Still a challenge, but not a heart-stopper.

So I kitted up some blocks, and got ready to sew.  That's March 12-15 laid out in a nice and orderly fashion.

Starting with that scary star, I sewed flippy corners for the outer geese components, and made the bonus triangles, too.

Since for a true bonus, those little triangles

could be squared up to be the 1.25" HSTs that I needed for the star - which meant I had half of them put together for free!

 

So HSTs became this (I used triangles instead of squares that would later be chopped off, because I'm stingy frugal that way)

which became this

(after I took the precaution of lopping off the corner, since I don't particularly like trying to do flippy corners with one triangle and one square corner) (And I saved the triangle because I'm stingy frugal that way)

And then this

became this, and I had a lovely finished star. 

Though it took forever since I had foolishly decided that I would break for lunch when it was finished, fully forgetting that that would guarantee errors and unpicking and unacceptable points and more unpicking.  My stomach was getting downright testy with me as I snapped that pic.
The next three blocks went together much more smoothly, even with all those mitered corners.

Here's a closer look at the one on the upper right.  Because I decided that if I was going to be mitering four corners, then by golly,  I was entitled to make it show.

And I invite you all to scroll back up and take a look at the next to last picture of the pinwheel star.
On the right, you'll notice some fabric creeping into the shot.
When Angela announced the RSC color for April, I was already six hours away from my stash.  My excitement that orange(!) is the color was definitely tempered by the fact that I hadn't brought any orange with me.
Clearly steps needed to be taken.

There.  That's better.