Fiesta

Update April 21:  Most of the blocks are done, just waiting for the patterns for the last 4 blocks.  I've got them all laid out on a sheet and pinned in place along with the border triangles.  You can see the four gaps for the last blocks.  Then it's assembly time.

 

Blocks 1 - 4

I have started on a virtual quilt-along project for a bright, scrappy quilt.  This is being put on my by local quilting shop and I am so pleased I joined in.  I'm having a lot of fun and learning new things.  For example, on block #12 I initially pieced in rows and then sewed the rows together.  My scant 1/4" seam may have been a bit too scant and my block was oversized to the point that after I trimmed it down I will lose some of my points when I assemble the quilt top.  When I made the second block #12 I instead assembled as 4-patches, trimmed to size and then assembled the block.  This gave me much better results.

These are blocks 5 - 8.  I have been paying much more attention to the direction I am pressing.  I kept running into situations where I would have two seams pressed in the same direction, but the other end of the seam had already been sewn to the opposite direction.  Now I am laying out all the pieces for the block and really thinking through just alternating each seam regardless of which side is light.  Pressing to the dark works when just doing square patches but when you have half square triangles in the mix it wasn't working out so well for me.

Finally, I learned to split apart the seam behind bulky joins such as with pinwheels.  This really reduces the amount of bulk in the seam.  These are blocks 9 - 12.

These are blocks 13 - 16.  Block 13 leaves you with enough extra HST's to make a second block so I did that for my extra block at the end.  We are making 2 each of 24 blocks and need a total of 49.