Nurse's Cross - Mischievous Wife section 6

If you're familiar with the Gypsy Wife quilt - the quilt my Mischievous Wife quilt is a simplification of - then you know that section 6 is the biggest section in the quilt.  Not so much for my quilt.  My "Section 6" is only this one block.  When I divided mine into sections, I tried keep the same focus blocks in the same sections as the original quilt.  As it turned out, the only focus block I used from the original Section 6 was the Nurse's Cross and it was placed in the quilt in an area where the sections are only 12 inches.  Therefore it is a section unto itself.

I don't actually have the pattern for the gypsy wife, so I don't know how the author intends for you to make the Nurse's Cross block.  I found it to be a challenging block to figure out.  The center involved some piecing with rectangles, triangles, and a center square that were then trimmed down into a square.  (It was supposed to trim to 6-1/2 inches, but I guess my seams were a little big so it was only 6-1/4 to 6-3/8, but it worked out okay.  I should have cut my patches bigger since I was trimming it down anyway.)  I then added the yellow triangles.  Then I paper pieced the corners with the red and orange rectangles, and then attached them to the rest of the block.

It took me 2-1/2 hours to sew the one 12 inch (finished) block.  I had already pre-cut all of the pieces so there was only trimming down of sewn units in terms of cutting.  I can't say that I enjoyed it.  I really don't care that much for paper piecing, and I wish I had cut my patches a bit larger in areas where I was going to be paper piecing or where I was going to be trimming down the sewn unit.  But at least it is finished and I like the way the finished block looks.