sewbizgirl

So sorry about your arm, Barbara! Hope they get you straightened out (no pun intended!) and out of pain soon.

My quilt top ended up being around 66" x 84"-- plenty big enough for a full sized bed. The bed I took the pictures on was a full size. The quilt has some overhang on either side... It took just over 800 colored squares. There are 31 16-patch blocks in mine, rows of 3 and 4 alternated, with the X blocks in between. The X blocks take 4 squares of background fabric, each 4.5" square. Then you use more candies to "snowball" the corners on the 4.5 squares, to form the points. Last of all, there is a border of 4.5 squares all the way around, with snowballed corners to complete the points on the outside edge. You should be able to follow that from looking at the pictures.

If you want to do the color families as I did, you need to sort out 24 candies that all are in the same "family", i.e., lime greens, or sage greens, bubble gum pinks, purpley pinks, etc. There are differences even within one color. You'll use 16 for the big patch, and another 8 for the points.

I made all my 16 patches first, then laid them out on the bed (or use your design wall, if you have one). Work on your placement of colors. Then you can lay out the X block squares and place the remaining 8 candies that match each block. Put together each X block. Then I sewed the blocks in rows.

Because the intersections were so thick in the X blocks, I pressed the seams open, rather than to one side. The 16 patches have the seams pressed to the sides and alternated row by row.

That's about all there is to it!