My ANZAC Day Quilt Top

As per yesterday's post explaining the ANZAC day quilting challenge I started with this pile of fabric at 6:45am.

At 8pm I called 'down tools' because I had my quilt top completely pieced!

This quilt top is 2 metres square, so it was a pretty big effort in a day, especially with all that cutting out.

Each little square is 4.5 inches.  There are 180 of them.  There are also 40 triangles to make up the points.  Did I mention the cutting?!

As far as a challenge went, I think I did well.  It would have been nice to have a sandwiched quilt, but I had trouble cutting out the background fabric and that took a lot of my time to sort out.  The instructions asked for a 43" square cut across the diagonal to form the four triangle sections of the background between the points.  My fabric was not wide enough.  I later found this was a common complaint for this pattern.

I got around it by deciding to piece this section from two triangles rather than making it from one large one.

I ignored the 43" square and instead cut out a 21.75" square and then cut that in half.  This let me get the right amount of fabric from the same yardage with just one extra join.  I did that four times, one for each side. The pattern also asks for four 20.5 inch squares.  I managed to get these from the off cut of each of the above so it was very efficient on fabric.

The above photo shows the extra join, I think it works well with the quilt and was the easiest solution I could think of.

So there you have it, one Made in Cherry quilt top!

And in case you think it is a good idea to try to make a quilt in a day, it isn't.  Or maybe only if you pick a small quilt...  My shoulders STILL hurt!