"Checkered!" upcycled blues #42 top finished

I put my mind to it and really went to town!

And yes, I finished it. No, I’m not planning on doing a border. The top is finished!

Here’s a short slide show of how I made this. I really think it is pretty self-explanatory. First I made 16 patches as I showed last time. I made lots and lots of them. In fact, in the end, I needed 516 of them!

Oh, and for those of you who are “into” how many squares I had to make - that’s 8256 squares. However, because some of the squares were cut off when I trimmed the side setting triangles, there aren’t that many in the quilt itself. But that’s how many I made!

Check out these pictures as I made the top - I took pictures every couple of rows that I finished! This way you could see progress as I advanced from a tiny little triangle to a whole queen size top!

I think the only thing “different'“ that I did about this was that when I was at my peak of long rows (for the two the longest rows - I need 33 16 patches for each row), then I started making some of the other end just to encourage myself. I ended up having several rows made working towards the center - the piece looked like this -

I trimmed off those little pointy edges with scissors after I sewed this piece to the rest of the top.

If you right click on this and save it as a picture, you can print it out for yourself.

I also found myself getting frustrated as I knew I wouldn’t remember how many I had done in each row, so I printed out this blank piece of paper with the layout on it and wrote beside it how many of those 16 patch checkerboards I needed. Then as I did them, I used the orange highlighter and marked them off - see below.

This kept me motivated and encouraged. Yes, for me, it’s really that simple sometimes!

One other trick I thought I might show you is this one - I put a safety pin in the top left corner so I would never get confused as to the direction I was working.

It really helps!

This quilt top is about 91.5”x97” which is fine for me.

It’s a tiny bit smaller than I’ve been making, but I thought it was “big enough” for me. for this one.

Yes, even I get weary of this kind of thing! Plus, I have to keep bringing myself into check or I’ll make bigger and bigger quilts and that can get ridiculous. The quilt we have on our bed was about 96”x96” before quilting and it is PLENTY big - could be smaller and it would be fine! (We have a queen sized bed!)

Anyway…for now, this is how I made this top. If you think I should write up on officially as a pattern, I can do that.

Let me know in the comments if you think I should. You can also tell me if you think these instructions are sufficient. I’ll read them all and consider them.

And that’s what’s been happening in my sewing room lately!

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Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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