COLOR MY WORLD--ASSEMBLY OF THE QUILT TOP

 Color My World is the 2021 Block of the Month pattern designed by Wendy Williams exclusively for The Quilt Show. The pattern is FREE for Star Members through December 31, 2021. 

Once all the many Small Houses, Tall Buildings, Mariner's Compass center, Little Houses and Skyscrapers are made, it is time to assemble them into a beautiful quilt top.

My finished Color My World quilt

STAYSTITCHING TIP: 

 It is VERY HELPFUL to staystitch BOTH EDGES of the Outer Circle of Tall Buildings/Skyscrapers/Little Houses in the City. This means sewing a line of stitches within the seam allowance area, using a regular stitch--2.5 works for me. This will  prevent all the bias edges of Background fabric from stretching on the outer edge and keep the seam allowances of all the buildings in place on the lower edge. This takes a few minutes to do and will save you lots of time/problems later.

These are Evelyn S's borders, showing where to staystitch--she hasn't done it yet:

Wendy has provided step-by-step instructions in Month 12 for Putting the Quilt  Together. See pages 6 and 7 of Month 12. 

My additional tips: 

It will take more time than you expect to make the complete Outer Circle of Tall Buildings, Little Houses in the City and the four Skyscrapers. Take your time, the end is near.

It will take LOTS more time to PIN the center circle with the Upper Roads to the Outer Circle. I know it took me 45 minutes to align and pin everything. Start at North, South, East and West. Then pin half-way between those points, then half-way again, etc. until you have as many pins as you want/need in place. The more pins, the easier the sewing will be. 

I tried to align as many road seams to Tall Building seams as I could, most matched pretty closely. It is not that they are "supposed" to align, they just did, most of the time.

 Here are some photos I took last July 2020 while finishing my sample quilt:

One of four corners assembled

Once you are ready to sew, have as much space around your machine as possible to minimize drag and allow you to sew carefully, with little stress. It took me more than an hour to sew this very long, circular seam. Put on good music and relax.

Check the back when you are done--this happens, at least once and probably more than once. Take the few seconds required to pull out a few stitches and FIX this. Your finished quilt will look much better in the end. You have worked too hard to let a few issues like this diminish your finished quilt:

Here is my finished quilt top BEFORE the outer borders. It looks wonky because I didn't take time to get it square on the design wall. I was just thrilled it was FLAT:

Wendy has instructions for cutting the outer borders from 7 strips of  crosswise grain fabric, 5" wide--this requires about 1 yard of border fabric. This is the most efficient use of fabric but will mean there are seams in all the borders. If you prefer lengthwise grain borders, with no seams, you will need about 2 yards. You can make your borders wider or narrower, as you please. I cut mine 5" wide, from crosswise grain--this busy fabrics makes the seams very hard to find.

It is most important that you cut the borders to the exact side needed, so the quilt will be flat and square. Measure your quilt, top to bottom, from edge to edge at both sides and the middle. These should be similar. If they are way off, like more than a 1/2" different, I try to find where I went wrong. Less than that, I use the average and "ease to fit". 

What you DON'T want to do is cut a long strip of border, sew it on and whack off the extra--this almost guarantees the quilt will not be square. Cut your borders to the precise size needed, pin at both ends, the middle and along the edges as needed to keep things aligned. The more pins, the easier the sewing.

Once the left and right borders are sewn on, measure the quilt again in three places, to determine the size of the top and bottom borders. Cut those to exact size and add them to complete your top.

Here is mine on the design wall, all done, flat and square.  Being admired by the adorable Stella:

When yours is done, PLEASE POST A PHOTO ON THE FORUM. There is a Topic just for this purpose: COLOR MY WORLD--SHOW YOUR COMPLETED TOP/QUILT HERE. I am very excited to see the many beautiful quilts that come from this year's Block of the Month!

Just for fun, I took photos of the kit fabrics I had left and all the background bits. I still have them all saved for some future project:

NEXT UP: Some quilting suggestions and detailed photos of how I quilted mine. Wednesday December 1, 2021.

BIG REMINDER: these patterns are only available FREE to Star Members of The Quilt Show until December 31, 2021. After that you will have to purchase the pattern from the designer at significant cost. Print and/or Save the pattern so you will have access when you are ready. The Quilt Show will not be able to provide you any patterns you are missing.

Let's quilt.

Barbara