If you're interested in a bit of the how and why, read on....but I will warn you, it's not really all that interesting, unless you are interested! No one will know if you just scroll through the pictures.... ;-)
Inspired by this, I knew that I wanted to start with squares of fabric as my base. Since I already had a bunch of 10" squares (including those I won on Debbie's blog giveaway eons ago - thanks again Debbie! <3 i="">, it was a easy choice to go with a match (and use 10" squares for my starting point). To make a quilt large enough for a Queen bed, I quickly determined that I needed 110 squares (later revised to 121 because I initially only factored in half of the seam allowance loss...sometimes it doesn't pay to rush through the math!). I was determined that they would all be different fabrics, so I had to make several passes through my fabrics and broaden my range a little to include a few greyish greens and some lighter values than I would have otherwise chosen....
All of the fabrics lined along the back and in the first 2 rows in front (above) were pre-cut squares - the rest needed a quick pressing and a square cut. This process took a couple of evenings....but by the Friday night, I was ready to start making little groupings of fabrics I would 'stack 'n' whack' (essentially stacking 5 different fabrics in one pile, then taking even cuts off of two sides and repeating a second time....then shuffling the pieces from the first pair of cut to reveal the fabric in 3rd place, and the pieces from the second pair of cuts to reveal the fabric in 2nd place). But first I decided that I should loosely sort my final fabrics into lights, mediums and darks....
About half of my stacks of 5 pieces were lights + mediums and the other half were more mediums + darks. I tried to make sure that I didn't pick two pieces that were too similar one after the other....but I later discovered that when a bigger piece is cut, it can almost look like the parts came from different pieces of fabric (since there is sometimes a lot of variation in both colour and value across the surface of a single batik, esp. in a 10" square piece)....so when some of my blocks were sewn together, there was a bit less definition (= more blending) than I would have liked to see. All in all, I was pretty pleased with how it all came together.
So on the Friday evening I started making sets of five fabrics and cut four of the stacks and sewed them back together again (=20 completed blocks). Each set of 5 squares received a different set of cuts, so essentially there are really only 5 blocks with the exact same shape dimensions within the block (just look at the corner squares in the above picture and see the range....then look at other blocks with the same corner-square size, but likely different framing widths around it).
For my attention span, I need to work with a system and it's especially important that I trim as I go....so I would work on sewing two sets of blocks at one time (=10), chain sewing the first piece and then pressing (for all 10 squares), then attaching the 2nd piece to all 10 squares, etc. Once each set of 10 blocks was completely sewn and pressed, I would trim (to 8 7/8" square) and then stack in a pile of either 'dark' or 'light'.
On the Saturday I was able to sew the rest of the blocks (= 101 or 121 in total), and I finished off my evening by starting to lay them out on the floor. But before I did that, I did 'deal' my lights into five different piles, in an attempt to spread the fabrics around a bit (each fabric appears only 3 times - so I didn't want to have to worry too much about clustering them all together). I was only able to fit about 4-5 rows at a time in my open space...so I alternated between light and dark squares (on the diagonal), and then adjusted as necessary. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I stacked up each row and kept the pairs/squares in order.
Sunday morning I started working on sewing the blocks into rows and then joining the rows together. By lunchtime the quilt top was all sewn together, save the centre seam (I really want to give it a good pressing first, and the smaller pieces will be a bit easier to handle).
Now I just need to piece together the back (yes it will be pieced, but more simply)....and then deliver it off to Sue to work her magic and make it into a quilt! Hopefully I can get it put to bed (tee hee!) before I head off to Vermont in 10 days...
* in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that for more than a week following the class, the wonky piles of baskets and bins from class were still cluttering up my mud room. Right where I unloaded them upon arriving home. Once again, it's a good thing that I live alone and get very little company.... ;-)
