Stitching along, singing a song...

All done! All my 36 blocks for the quilt-along, that is. I'm waiting for the postman to bring me some sashing fabric (little does he know...), so I might have to wait until after Easter, but I have plenty to do while I waiting, so no problem there ;-) This is probably the neatest, most organized quilt project I have ever worked on, and I have tried out several methods that were new to me. I decided in the beginning that if I was going to take part in this, I would do it properly, follow instructions and read everything carefully and I'm glad I did! My slap dash ways have worked fine for me in the past, and while I don't see myself getting everything quite so sorted out on any project anytime soon, I have learned a lot.

As I mentioned, opening up the seams was one new revelation. It does take more time (for me, anyway...) than pressing the seam allowances to one side, and there was quite a good discussion on the pros and cons along the way. I found that while I was doing these court house step blocks that I would get the previous seam allowances messed up on the next round, and have to go back and try to get them to lie down again (probably doing it wrong...), but the final pressing from the front made everything OK, and as a result I have ended up with a stack of very neat and flat blocks. I'm not sure I will do that on my next quilt - it depends on how much in a hurry I am, but I do get the point! How about you? Press to one side or open up?

Here are some more of my blocks. To see the rest, have a look in my Flickr album and to see all the other lovely quilts being made, in the Mod Sampler pool. And do have a look at the tutorials! Elisabeth has put so much information in there, with very clear photos and instructions - I'd recommend this to any novice quilters out there!