Labor of Love: Block Complete!

I thought during our Christmas Break I'd have tons of time to sew and this block would get finished in no time.  I was wrong.  Turns out, having your hunny home, you generally have less time to do all those little lazy things you'd like to do.  At least, that's how it goes at my house.

Finally on Friday I made the time, and after several false starts, finished sewing the quilt square I'd promised a dear friend. 

When I started this project, I half-seriously declared, "It's just sewing a bunch of straight lines, right? How hard can it be??"  Well, turns out, it's a little bit hard.

What is hard about it, when sewing by hand, is keeping your quarter-inch seam at one quarter inch.  I painstakingly sewed one stitch, then the next, always placing my next stitch even with the one before. Doing that, I figured, I'd wind up with a nice, straight, even line.  Wrong again. I got to the end of that first row and was a full inch!! in from the edge. My nice, straight line went on the diagonal somehow.

I carefully pulled out all those stitches, grabbed a pen, and measured and drew a straight line, this time a consistent quarter-inch from the edge. Not sure what possessed me to try and sew straight without a line in the first place, but with the line, things went much better.

I finished joining row after row, pausing to press the seams open between each two, and by the end I was quite confident in my new skills. And, mostly it turned out okay.  I forgot to line up the last piece "just so" and it is obviously shifted to the side from where it should be. I am seriously thinking about taking it off and re-attaching it, this time with some attention to where the center rectangle actually is.

I've left the edges untrimmed at this point, because my dear friend said she could trim it or otherwise take care of it when she attaches the sashing around the edges.  With that disclaimer, I now, finally, present to you:

Labor of Love: Chimney Sweep Pattern: To JM from TH : )

So, JM, how is it? Sign-worthy, or should this one be my practice run??

I have LOTS more fabric, just in case!