The Jury's out on the Disappearing Nine-Patch

Ever since I saw this quilt, I have been mildly intrigued with the disappearing 9-patch pattern. Initially I couldn't see why someone would make a block, only to hack it into 4 pieces. But I decided I'd make a little project to kill three birds with one stone. Not 2 stones, three!

First, this project is to keep me from hitting the bottle of red wine this afternoon. I'm not a winer (as opposed to a whiner, which I know plenty about), and I never drink without dinner consumption. But I have been having lots of problems with my almost 6-year old's behavior and today was an all time low. I work 3 mornings a week. He is home with our awesome nanny 2 of those days. She says that he practically waits until he sees me drive off before he starts his antics. We have spoken to him repeatedly, given reasonable timeouts, even made him write "I will listen to Jen" 20 times. It is just not getting through to him. He's enticing his three and a half year old brother to be a mis-behaven brat too. I got home today to a list of a dozen things they did from spitting to taking off their clothes to absolute rudeness. The prize was his room, which they refused to clean - ALL toys everywhere, books & clothes strewn about and about 7000 tiny plastic fuse beads on the floor. I nearly died. I promptly had my 3 year old help me clean all the toys into a big laundry basket and I have removed them from his room for several days. He can get the beads himself! The bedroom is now purgatory for him. Long story...I needed some sewing therapy!

Second and third reasons for this project are shorter & simpler. I wanted to see this pattern in action & I wanted to try another project using what I think are very cool fabrics, but just not in my comfort zone of colors. This is me taking a leap of faith outside of my box, so to speak.

So I made these 5-8" blocks, constructed of nine 3" squares. They are mostly in shades of aqua, turquoise and accents of brown and green. I'm not much of a blue person. And now that it is complete, I am not so sure about the orange either.

OK, step two...hack the 5 blocks into 20 blocks.

And lastly, voila...sew 20 blocks together and add a 3/4" border of the blue. I plan to add a wide (maybe 4") ivory border around the entire piece. I will also use this as another vehicle to work on my free-motion/machine quilting.