Ashley's Aura

I remade one of my early blocks, C6 - Ashley's Aura, made when I had little confidence in my ability to sew tiny curved pieces.

Waiting for Irene
While waiting for Hurricane Irene, I decided to remake this block. Piecing the block using three different fabrics makes it far more interesting and layered. In fact, I think the two blocks barely resemble each other. I have no regrets about this remake. I'd like to rename the block something like Waiting for Irene. Anyone have any suggestions?

Something New
It was a pleasure to use my brand-new fancy-schmancy Omnigird portable pressing board -- a most wonderful birthday gift from my friend Sherry. This is the pressing board I've needed and craved as I worked on this project. As you can see, I have an ironing board but it's just too soft. The added benefit of this pressing board is that it's very portable and I can take it along to workshops.

Fabrics
For the central fussy cut, I used a fabric I've not used before. It reminds me of the theme fabric a bit. The other fabric was used for J12 - Rebecca's Basket.

Changes in the Numbers
This changes most of my tallies since the first edition of this block was made with 5 pieces instead of 9, it had no fussy cuts, no direction fabrics, and a different construction technique. Here's the first edition of this block and my new numbers.

My Dear Jane Stats
169 square blocks
14 blocks made twice or thrice
3,559 pieces (in the "keeper" blocks)
100 of the "keeper" blocks (59%) have 628 fussy cuts
29 of the "keeper" blocks (17%) use directional fabrics (such as stripes and plaids) -- 230 pieces in all

127 (75%) of the blocks were hand-pieced
16 (9%) were hand-appliqued
22  (13%) were hand-pieced and hand-appliqued
4 (2%) were machine-pieced and hand-appliqued -- these were very early blocks made before I completely abandoned machine piecing for this project: E10, G11, G13, J13