This came out of a Guild workshop on a new technique for making a 9-Patch block. We used a layer cake (10″ Squares) and I must say that picking fabric from a single collection is a great way to go. Once the 9-patches were done I put the project away for awhile. It eventually turned up as one of my UFO Challenges.

About the same time that I was looking to sew the blocks together a blog I was following came out with a quilt-along to do a Disappearing 9-Patch. I thought that would be an interesting way to put the blocks together. The blogger gave so many choices that it was too hard to choose which look I liked best so I used four different ways to slice and restitch those blocks.

But I wasn’t done experimenting yet. I wanted to try my hand at a quilt-as-you-go technique; the Guild was having a class but it was on a Thursday and would interfere with my regular sewing session. So I looked online, got some help from my Tuesday stitchers and it was done in no time.

I enjoyed the technique particularly for the quilting. I used different quilting patterns on the different blocks – some showed up better than others but it was certainly easier to play when the space you were working on was smaller than the entire quilt.

There was a lot more hand stitching involved with this method than I realized. All the backing on the blocks is hand stitched to the block beside and beneath it. I chose to do this one without a sashing, but my next one (and I already have the blocks finished) will be with a sashing.

This was passed on to the Guild as a donation.