gypsy child blocks

I’ve been tackling the trimming of 500+ 3” hsts for this beloved project a couple at a time. The project is beloved - the trimming is not. But I do it because it helps me with accuracy when I put the blocks together and I want that for this project.

I had enough of the blocks trimmed that I decided to begin assembling some. My current plan of attack is to make 16 patch blocks rather than assembling in rows. With all the tiny pieces and seams, I feel like rows would leave a lot more room for distortion as I work with the pieces over and over, which is why I’m doing it in blocks.  So far, so good!

I try to at least trim a few hsts every day. If I have a fair amount of time, I can get one patch worth of hsts trimmed and put into a block. I have been using Suzy Quilts tutorial for chain piecing a quilt to assemble the blocks. Same general concept, just a lot smaller than a whole quilt. It’s working great.

I’m trying not to put too much time and thought into the placement of the hsts, but I am trying to keep them mostly spread out and mixed, so it’s been helpful to put the blocks on a design wall. Even though I have one full wall in my sewing space devoted to a huge design wall, it’s completely covered with several projects already (I’m looking at you, Gypsy Wife). Fortunately, I found a different space for this project that’s working. I can’t get the full width of the project visible on it at once, but it’s helping anyway as I lay out a few blocks. You can see I’ve got 6 blocks done already, and I need 22 more.

I have this one funky piece of design wall that is thinner than the other two from my main wall. At one point when I first got it, I just threw a really large batting scrap up on it, which only ended up covering about 2/3 of the foam core piece. It never stood well on its own because it was thin and wobbly, so it didn’t make a good portable design wall. I had no idea what I was going to do with it when I reorganized my room several months ago. I ended up putting it on a small, unused bit of wall between the doors and my fabric shelves. There is actually a small gap of an inch or two between the shelves and the door wall, so I was able to slide the design board into that gap. The uncovered part is back behind the shelves and the covered part fits perfectly next to the door. It was a great use of the space. My daughter’s sewing machine and table is right in front of it, so I was going to let her use it, but I’ve kind of annexed it already.

I’m really happy to see this project come together and turning into a quilt a block at a time!

Little quilting chores make for big quilting finishes.