WIP Weds: Another Quilt

So I headed off to quilting class on Saturday afternoon looking a little bit like I was going on holiday for a month. We're having a couple of sessions for Christmas projects and I hadn't decided what to make. I thought the easiest thing to do was take pretty much all my Xmas fabric, some wadding, some plain fabric, some thread in winter colours along with my machine, cutting mat, rulers and sewing stuff. I also had to take the finished robot quilt so everyone could have a look at it. If you're familiar with the big blue bags from Ikea, I had one of those full to bursting plus my machine!

The plan really was to look through Sarah's quilting books and see if there was a block I liked that I could make into a Xmas cushion (or two) but of course I decided the best thing to do was start a Xmas jelly roll quilt. I'm hoping to have the top done before this Xmas but I'm definitely not planning to have the quilting done by then; I'm not quite that crazy!

I spent the whole session cutting so most of the stuff I'd carried could have been left at home. After the session I finished the last of the cutting (loads of white squares) at home. I decided to take the project along to Monday night's sewing class as it was all packed up ready.

The quilt is made up from 16 blocks. Initially the blocks all follow a simple log cabin pattern with half the block from light fabrics and the other half from dark ones. I pretty much completed these at Monday night's class, with just the final few strips to add at home. The final round of each block varies based on its position in the quilt, to create stars between the blocks. Check out Rachel's quilt here for the finished look. This means there are 4 different blocks in the quilt. The quickest to make are the corner blocks (there are fewer triangles to sew) and I got these done yesterday.

Corner blocks

Today I made the 4 central blocks. These take the longest as they have the star sections in every corner.

Central blocks

I have 8 more blocks to finish before deciding on a layout. It all requires a bit of careful checking and double checking that the triangles are forming in the right direction, as well as careful labelling of the completed blocks.