Little House on the {insert clever place here}

Right, I was going to go all clever in that title to tie into the first block I'm going to post, but I just ran out of...whatever.
Block #16: Calico Puzzle. Here's where I was going with that: I loved reading the Little House on the Prairie books growing up. I especially loved the These Happy Golden Years one because that's where they kiss and get engaged. Aww. In those books, they always talked about going to buy calico at the store to make their new dresses. I had no clue what calico was. Honestly I'm still a little confused. I should probably look it up... Anyway, I like to think that the purple paisley I chose is a good example of what a "calico" print is, but I doubt Laura had any paisley dresses. Pity.

Block #17: Cats & Mice. I can totally see how this one is cats and mice. The big triangles are cats, the little triangles are mice. I think. These are some of the fabrics that started my collection for this quilt. I saw these at the store while shopping and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I loved them. I love paisleys, can you tell? The subtlety of the white on white and white on off white just tickles my fancy. For some reason my template 13 triangles seem to be smaller than necessary so I had to do a little stretching of the pieces in the X to fit the bigger triangles. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me. I chose the white and off white for this one because I realized I hadn't been using my LARGE stash of whites much, and that's one of the main focuses of this quilt is.

 Block #18: Century of Progress. It was refreshing to use different-shaped triangles for this one. It makes me think of windmills, and I love windmills. I take pictures of windmills all the time. See below the block for some examples. (Just kidding! I just realized I'm on the desktop and all my pictures of windmills are on the laptop, which my husband has at work...I'll try to remember to come back and post some...)