eo-1 Kaleidoscope Quilt - Top Assembly

The top assembly seems to be the point of complications for many of my quilting projects. I have become pretty careful about squaring up and trimming blocks to uniform dimensions, but even with this, there is usually some challenge.

For this quilt, the challenge seems to be the stretch in the triangle pieces. I sewed each block together in pairs (pressing seams open). If the triangle pieces were stretched during the block assembly, the resulting block is not flat. This only becomes really obvious during assembly.

The image above shows the back side of a pair of blocks. After pairing the blocks, I sewed the pairs together to form a 2x2 square of blocks.

The seventh row is left as pairs of blocks. I like to assemble a quilt top in smaller units like this to avoid having seams that stretch across the entire quilt. In this case, I sewed four 2x2 blocks together to make 4x4 blocks, and then two 4x4 blocks to make and 8x4. I also sewed the remaining 2x2 to a 2x1 to make 2x3 blocks, and then four 2x3 blocks to make an 8x3. Finally, I sewed the 8x4 to the 8x3. With this approach, I end up with a single long seam.

The final quilt top is shown above. I really like how the circular pattern emerges in the design once the blocks are sewn together. I also see a map compass symbol repeated in the top. The color combination is a surprise. I think there is too much red in this quilt - and as I was putting it together, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the landscape in Eastern Oregon. In autumn, the red comes from willow branches - along river banks. So, unless you are driving along the John Day river, there is not much of this color in the landscape.