Eighty-One Individual Blocks:

Nine Rows:

Three Thirds:

All together now:

On to the quilting design!

Sixty-three down, eighteen to go!

Down to the last two rows of blocks and I am finally confident enough to sew these curvy liitle blocks without pins. I rely heavily on my very pointy tweezers though! Also, I am close enough to sewing the blocks together to start serious consideration of the machine quilting I will do. Should I keep it simple and just stitch-in-the-ditch around all the interlocking circles or should I fall back on feathers or, perhaps, I should take a “modern quilting” approach. We will see…

Forty-five down, thirty-six to go! I don’t know if I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I can now believe there is an end to the tunnel! Those secondary pattern circles are really popping out all over now.

And how about the backing I bought? What looks like shadows is the layer folded beneath showing through. The red dots are about 1/4 inch in diameter and they are about 1 inch apart. The dots are randomly scattered rather than in aligned rows. I like it!

Twenty seven down, fifty four to go!

I am 1/3 of the (winding) way in the block construction phase. Hooray!

Ten down, 71 to go:

I think I have found the best methodology for me for sewing Winding Ways blocks: pin, pin, pin! I tried my Curve Master foot which I have used with success in the past and I tried a couple of pin-less methods as described on You Tube, but I have decided I get the fastest progress and most accurate seams by simply pinning a lot! You gotta do what you gotta do! And I used a quarter inch foot.

I am loving how the secondary interlocking circle design is becoming apparent now that I have a few blocks completed.

… on this Merry Christmas Day!

Normally, I do not pre-wash fabric before making a quilt. However, when the quilt will have 20 different red fabrics, it is a different story. Red has a tendency to “run” when washed. I did not want a red and pink quilt after all, so I pulled 20 fat quarters of red fabrics and washed them twice with two Color Catcher sheets in hot water and Synthrapol and dried them in the dryer. Synthrapol is a special detergent used by dyers to remove excess dye and Color Catchers are little sheets of non-woven fabric that absorb “fugitive” dye during washing. I felt like I had done a reasonable job of preparing the “reds,” but you cannot wash half the fabrics and not wash the other half (the neutral background fabrics), so they were washed in hot water and dried as well:
Twenty fat quarters of “reds”:

Twenty fat quarters of “neutrals” :

Of course, now that they were laundered the fabrics lost a lot of their “body.” So I prepared some home-made spray starch and sprayed and ironed dry all 40 fat quarters. It took two quarts of spray starch for this step.:

Two stacks of nicely prepared fabrics. Preparing the fabrics required a couple of days work between other activities.:

Next, I (with the help of a friend) ran all 40 fat quarters through the Accuquilt GO! using the “Winding Ways” die set. All this cutting resulted in enough pieces for 81 eight-inch blocks. This step took less than two hours. Finally, ready to sew!:

I’m thinking I love my Accuquilt GO!