"Winter Blues" part 3.5

When I last posted about this project, I left you with a pic of the piles of cut fabric on my worktable . . .

There are two reasons why this turned out to be a good thing: the final quilt will have alternating pinwheels in light and dark blue. Arranging the piles like this let me see what's next to what.

The second reason I liked this arrangement of piles is that each pinwheel block has elements of the surrounding pinwheels within it. Having alternating piles of pieces on the table helped when it came to piecing the squares. I could easily see what fabrics appear above, below, and to the sides of any given pinwheel.

Of course, that was the middle of November . . . then, "life got in the way" and I did nothing with the pieces.

On Christmas Day, I started piecing the squares. I needed 140 of 'em for the body of the quilt. With only a week left in the old year, I pieced up a storm . . . I managed to sew 60 squares over that weekend.

During the week, I continued to sew squares. I pushed to finish sewing the squares before year's end, if possible. About two-thirds of the way, I discovered a piecing mistake I'd consistently made. Now, there was no way I was gonna rip out all that stitching, so I changed the design "on the fly" as it were (twice, even). I'm eager (and curious) to see what the changes will bring. I'm not even gonna tell ya what they are . . . when I'm finished with the quilt, we'll see 'em together. The changes may be too subtle to be noticed, but we'll see.

Now, after a week of hard sewing, I'm pleased to say that I finished sewing all the squares for the body of the quilt . . . 140 squares, in all. I'll need another 52 squares for the pieced border, but for the moment, I'm not gonna worry about the border (though there are gonna be changes there, as well).

When I cut the fabric, I cut ALL the fabric, knowing that I'd have some leftovers . . . not enough to make full pinwheels, though. These are the leftover pieces. The dark and light blue fabrics in the upper row were the fabrics I bought to supplement the fabrics in the swap; there's more than enough of those pieces to make complete one-color pinwheels. The dark and light blue fabrics in the lower row are "fabric swap" leftovers. There are not enough pieces to make complete pinwheels. What I have in mind is to arrange them by value and use them to make "scrappy" pinwheels, alternating with solid pinwheels (as well as alternating light/dark). But, I have other plans in mind for THAT quilt (like a yellow/orange/red background).

Thank you for reading this blog . . . leave a comment, and "follow this blog"!!