I bought some border print at the Goodwill store to try the OBW pattern. It turned out so good that I make 6 placemats and gave to my DIL - she loved them. Just didn't tell her where the fabric came from.

Go for it. Little mistakes disappear when the blocks are hexagons are sewn together. A design board is essential for laying out the hexagons. I used Cutebun's tutorial here on the board and also purchased Maxine Rosenthal's books. Between them both I finished my first OBW top. Now trying to decide if I want to quilt it myself or send it to Charismah.

I find the layering of the fabric scary too, but I watched a video by Marti Michell in which she demonstrates how to line up and cut the fabric. I plan on using her method when I get my round TUIT to make my OBW quilt. Just copy and paste:

http://www.quilterstv.com/channel/video/0?video=1352

DO NOT pre-wash your fabric or it will be harder if not impossible to line up.

Hope this takes away some of your fear. Happy stitches,
Liz

I've made 4 OBW's and didn't starch any of them before cutting. Lining up the print is important, but once your flower pins are in to hold it together the rest is fairly straight forward. It's fun to turn your triangles the three different ways to select which way they'll be to form your hexagon. Chain piece them together, press seams open. Deciding on final placement will be the hardest, at least it is for me. Then it's just sew the half hex's together to make your strips and then sew the strips together to make the top. This method is by far the fastest way to make a quilt, I've found anyway.

I took a class for the obw and it was really pretty easy. The hardest part was finding the exact match. Our instructor had us tear (carefully) the fabric at every repeat, and use more pins than the book suggested. Pinning was the hardest part. I was surprised at how easy it was. Remember to starch a lot and have fun.

Thank you all for your suggestions and words of encouragement. I'm going to purchase my fabric next Saturday and then I'm just gonna dive in and make it. I will post pictures.

reading the instructions is daunting. the actual doing is not as hard as it seems from the written instructions. try a test block, or two, you will see.

Loved that video!! Wish I had seen it before my OBW. Mine is a tale of woe.

I took a work shop, and while the instructor had made one, she did not suggest starching the fabric, and she really did not emphasize pinning as much as was needed. (Once I got a close look at her quilt I realized that while it looked great from 5", the patterns in the triangles was not a good match up close). My patterns sort of matched, and since I was using a paisley and not flowers, the misses showed up more than the gals using florals. I plastered my design wall for weeks afterward and finally came up with a 5 hexagons that were pretty close, plus some halves that also matched, and made a table runner (with a few contrasting triangles that made a star). I have not figured out what to do with all those left over triangles, but I may tackle them soon -- however, I used all the fabric I used as contrast (of course) and it is a very unusual periwinkle blue.

From what I learned (the hard way, of course), I would say that starching (loved the tip about hanging the fabric to dry it), cutting the large pieces so the pieces are exact and pinning the patterns so they match before cutting is critical. Take the time. If you do this right, the piecing was really the easy part. If I did not have a design wall, I don't think I would have made anything out of the triangles -- it really helped to see what worked, what didn't and how I could get the look I wanted. I think I would have pitched everything otherwise.

Once I clear a few more projects, I will be making another -- now that I understand the technique much better.

I was just going to recommend that you cut the fabric in half instead of trying to line up the whole 44 inches. Lining up the 22 inches is a lot easier. You may lose a extra cut but it is not worth the hassle of trying to line up 44 inches.

I can't stress enough that once you start sewing the wedges together make sure to iron the seams open. It makes it a lot easier to quilt when you are done.

It is scary at first but once you do the first one you will realize how simple it is. Just pick a point to be your first cut and then look for that point for the next cut.

Quilterfay

I know how you feel. I was panicky about the pins but my good friend who had already done one showed me how and it was real easy from then on.
So far I have 2 place mats together and will do the table runner next.
After I make a new quilted bag for my DD as she hinted she would like a new one,LOL