Pawprints

To show the process of what I have been doing since mid-June, here are the photos of my red scrappy top which was inspired by Nann Blaine Hilyard. She did scrappy pinwheels with reds and attributed her inspiration to Bonnie Hunter. I guess that makes this a second generation scrappy interpretation! LOL!
You may recall seeing this picture of the first 12 1/2" blocks to land on my design chair:

I had started out just using 2 1/2" squares cut from scraps (made when cutting for my swaps) as my leader/ender. But that cute little pile of scrappy 4-patches just grew and grew as I was working on Bonnie Hunter's mystery, Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll, (which I named Cotton Candy). I was itching to make something wonderful with the 4-patches!
Then I spotted Nann's idea of alternating pinwheels with red patches. I loved her quilt! And I had lots of reds, too. I used 4 1/2" squares of scrappy reds to assemble the 4-patches into a giant 9-patch block. I worked on other stuff, too. My goal was to make one or two of the big blocks per day until I had a total of 36 blocks. Being true scrappy, some of the lights in the 4-patches were kinda mediums. That made my first attempts at a placement layout full of errors. This was on the deck and was disturbed by breezes!

Sorry for the interruption from my helper, Raven! She believes in a big roll and stretch and yawn after her sunbath.

I finished sewing the last few blocks this week and waited for a calm, no-wind time to make my final arrangement on  my driveway.

This was done at dusk on a swelteringly muggy August 1st night. After I got all the blocks arranged the way that I wanted them, I pinned numbered slips of paper, one through six, on each of the first blocks in the far left-hand column. Then I carefully picked up each row across placing the first block on top of the next one and so on. Then I had six stacks of six block rows in order. That's what keeps me on the right track when I sew them together. Here I am picking up the stacks. Geez, it's a workout!

Then this week, I worked on sewing the blocks together into rows. I leave the little marker paper right on there as I assemble the blocks because I'm gonna NEED those for when I do the rows. In fact, I like to leave them on until I take the top to the longarmer because it helps me to orient the top for when I do borders, too.

Today, I got the center of the top sewn and pressed. Here is the picture of the top in direct sunlight with the shadow of my head! LOL! I measured the top and it is 73"X73". Too tired to do the borders today, but I'm thrilled with my progress and I love the way the quilt is coming out!