Quilt 10: "Forbidden Palace" Quilt Kit

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned quilt 10 - the "Forbidden Palace" kit that I got at the store "Patchwork With Gail B". Well, the time has finally come to launch that project.

The kit comes with 80 squares of glorious Japanese prints (each square a different print). It also comes with a length of plain black cotton. First you cut out 640 1.5 inch squares out of the black (there's a good bit of black cotton left over after this - that will be used later for the border and binding). Next you cut the squares in half to product rectangles.

In the photo below I've gotten that far - it took me about 3 hours of work (well, maybe 2.5 hours?):



Next you stitch the black squares on the corners of the triangles (as shown below):



Here we are - 160 rectangles with the 640 squares sewn on. I think I spent about 5 hours on this step:



Now we clip the corners of each block:



and then press the block so that the little black squares make a triangle in the corner of each block:



And here's the result after pressing the corners out (back side):

and front side:

The result is a rectangular "snowball" block. Now to finish the remaining 159 blocks. I estimate it will take about 2-3 hours.

With this quilt design, the effect of the black corners on each block is to create a kind of "stained glass window" effect with the various prints. It's stunning!

I've done snowballs twice before - my first and third quilts used this type of block. The third quilt (like this one) was a kit from the same store - and it's overall design was VERY similar (a mix of blocks, each with a different print). I remember with that third quilt that it took quite a bit of time and thought to decide which blocks to put next to each other. This one will take a bit of time, too (not really sure how much, but we'll see).