The Push

I've been working hard to get Rambo Bright together, and get it over to Cathy Tomm for quilting. I've been pushing myself pretty hard, and my body feels it in a big way today. When I'm done writing this post, I am jumping into a hot bath and then taking Sunday the way it's meant to be - a day of rest.

Yesterday, I put un-sashing on every alternate block. Way back when I was working out the pattern for the quilt top, I decided that I would corral some of the chaos with a bit of neutral to rest the eye. I chose a mottled grey because this couple has a bit of a darker personality than white would allow.

The centers of the alternate blocks are only 6.5" square, while the block A's are 9.5". This won't give me much "sashing" to equalize the sizes, but it should work to contain the colour and give each construction seam at least one on-grain side. After trimming, I had this pile:

Here is a shot of all the quilt blocks gathered in one place. There are 49 block A and 36 block B. If you calculate that, it will give you an area of, well, more than my husband or I can calculate this early on a Sunday morning.

63.75 square feet! And that's not including the setting triangles!! This will be my very first quilt set on point. I did all the math for the setting pieces a year ago when I drafted the pattern, so all I did was trust my math and cut. All of the proper elements are in place and tomorrow I should be able to find some floor space and decide on a layout. Here's a teaser:

Aaaand I'm loving the grey! It seems to be the perfect sized speed bump for all that colour - just slowing the eye enough to notice block differentiations. It's not enough to overpower, and not enough to make it bland (as if anything could make all that colour bland). I also noticed that, should I not be able to find the space to lay it out, I could just randomly pick blocks to sew together and it will still look great.

I am going to love this!!! So will the Bride and Groom, crazy artists that they are.