Pieced units sewn for Cathy's Southwest quilt

Sampling of pieced units for Cathy's Southwest quilt

At last, I finished sewing the pieced units for Cathy’s Southwest quilt. I’m so happy! The rest of the quilt is made up of rectangles and squares in plain, unpieced fabric.

I still have a lot of trimming and removing of paper to do on a few dozen paper pieced units. The picture shows a sampling of each of the pieced units (trimmed up), laid out roughly as a quadrant of the quilt. The purple/gold nine-patch actually goes in the far corners of the quilt. It seemed kind of silly to leave it hanging out there by itself like the former planet Pluto.

This quilt has been years in the making, and I got so excited trimming up and removing paper from the first few units. It was an adrenaline rush!

Tonight I’ll work on trimming and removing the paper on the rest of the units. Tomorrow I’ll cut the squares, lay out the units on the design wall and begin piecing the quilt top together.

I’ve been nervous about not having enough of the purple, but I think I’ll be okay. I bought the fabric years ago, and I doubt I can find exactly the same color, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work out.

See more progress on: make Cathy's Southwest quilts