Quilt 3: Piecing the Top

I have to admit to being a real quilting junkie. I can't bear the thought of not having my "fix" of hand-quilting in the evenings. I decided to put divert my energy into getting my small "kit" quilt put together so I can take it with me when we go to visit with Aunt Sheila.

Got all 99 "snowflake" blocks made. Then I pressed them "open" so they are ready to stitch together.

The quilt design has 50 blocks with pink corners and 49 with green corners. You are supposed to alternate pink and green. In addition, it takes a little thought when deciding which blocks to put toegether.

Now you can see some of my "method". First I separated the pink-edged blocks from the green ones. Then I made separate stacks for each center color (all the yellow-centered blocks with green edges are in a stack, all the yellow-centered blocks with pink edges are in another stack and so on...). The stacks are sitting in front of my sewing machine and computer keyboard.

Next I selected the 9 blocks to form the first row - and those are placed in a row on my desktop (photo above). I started on the left side and stitched the blocks together, working from left to right until the entire row was stiched (going slowly to avoid accidentally getting the blocks out of sequence).

Once I had that strip done, I placed it face-up on my desktop and then selected the blocks for the next strip, matching up and down and side to side. Once the next strip's blocks were selected, I stitched them together and then joined the strips. The photo below shows the quilt top after the first 2 rows have been sewn, and the 3rd row blocks just before stitching.

And here it is (below) - all done except for the border fabric!

I didn't precisely time the work on this - but I think I spent roughly 5 hours stitching the top. I did manage to mess up a couple of times: accidentally putting two pink-cornered blocks together instead of alternating. But for the most part I kept it straight.

Now to make the "sandwich."