I got so much accomplished the other day on friend's 9-patch quilt! I'm so excited. It took me most of the afternoon. I have to make 9 9-patch blocks. So I started with 81 pieces of fabric that the mom and I picked. But it's all decorator fabric so it was going to shrink like mad. So I washed it twice to get all the shrinkage out. That's a long story by itself as we had picked fabric and washed the first time and many of the pieces were then too small to make 2 little block pieces with. FRUSTRATING, so we went through all the fabric again looking for other pieces that would work well.
I pinned them together in block sections and washed. I cut all the pieces down the other day. I only did it one block at a time. Once I pressed, I cut them down to 3 1/2" and then I pinned a label on each piece: "block 1 piece 1, block 1 piece 2, etc." Time consuming to do it that way, but I know it will save me time and aggravation later.
Now I'm ready to piece, but have been really busy, today being no exception...maybe a little later.
When I made my Gramma's quilt, I picked blocks with special meanings, but also 7 of them were VERY simple. I bit off more than I can chew with a different project and quilting became work. If you work on something simpler, you'll be back in the swing of things before no time quiltcrazy!
Have a great weekend!