Yvonne finished quilting her gorgeous Black and White Thinking Outside the Block and was kind enough to send in some of her ideas, tips and tricks for this project…

From our Guest Blogger, Yvonne Ericson

After reading the directions for “Thinking Outside the Block” I determined that I needed a “map” because I was using different colored centers for the quilt blocks.

After planning the color arrangement I then counted out how many blocks of each color would have to have seams ironed in and how many would be ironed out. This made it a very simple method for chain piecing the blocks.
The other thing that I did different from the pattern directions but I did not cut up the strips ahead of time. I took a WOF strip and attached the center blocks to it and then cut them apart. I continued on in this manner for the whole quilt. It was fast and allowed me to square up the blocks as I progressed. No surprises for me at the end.

On to the quilting.  Using the ‘Toadusew’ color and quilt planning worksheet for “Thinking Outside the Block” I started out with a simple quilting plan.

When I finished this quiltingI discovered the spaces were too large to leave unquilted so I had to go back and add more quilting. New plan!

I quilted to each colored square and then jumped over it and continued on. I didn’t want my black quilting thread showing in the colored blocks.

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