Stacks of Jewels

1680 black and 1260 colored pieces

I'm done cutting block pieces (border and backing will wait).  I started to despair that I would never see the end of it.

When I began cutting material nearly two weeks ago, I soon discovered that I could only cut it in daylight.  The living room lights in the evening weren't bright enough to see the ruler lines against the dark material.  I resorted to cutting some of the colors in the morning before work just to make progress.  Otherwise, I mostly worked on the weekends.  Even then, I'd start to lose my mind after three hours of precision cutting and would need to take a break.  I worked on the the colors first, and tried not to think about the five yards of black that was patiently waiting.  I did the greens, then the blues and finally finished the reds last Wednesday.  Then I had no choice but tackle the bolt of black.  I finished all the pieces on Sunday night.  Huzzah!

Now I have to face the piecing and stitching.  Rob jokes I'm going to kill my sewing machine.  I probably should give it a good cleaning and oiling before I start.  But my good ol' Singer can take on anything!  I can't wait to see this quilt start to come together.

The blocks are mostly shades of one color.  It's only the small square on the two outer corners that change, depending on where the block is placed.  I can assemble the majority of the blocks before I need to lay them out.  Technically, I could probably count the blocks I need with different colored corners... but given my track record of counting correctly, I'll feel a lot safer physically seeing which pieces belong where.