The Phoebe Quiltalong - The Final Week

We have reached the final week of the Phoebe Quiltalong and we are going to construct our quilt tops! Most of the instruction for this week will be in the video tomorrow — it will be live on Instagram at noon Pacific Time and then I will save the video to both Instagram and YouTube. 

I think it will be most helpful to show you how to cut the corner and side triangles (in my opinion, the scariest part!) with a video rather than still images but I will give you some tips here as well.

• Before you start cutting your blocks for the setting triangles, decide which blocks you want in the center of your quilt. Your eye is going to be more naturally drawn to the center of the quilt so this is valuable real estate. Save the blocks with your least favorite fabric combinations for the sides of the quilt. 
• Some fabrics or colors are going to stand out more than others in your quilt. See how much that bright red fabric stands out in mine? I want to make sure it is evenly distributed around the quilt. Of course it would be nice to have everything evenly distributed, but there are only so many hours in a day and I am not spending all of mine obsessing about block placement. I will spend time noticing what catches my eye and my best to mix things up.
  
  See the difference here? I may continue to make changes but I am already feeling better.
  
• The quilt will be constructed in diagonal rows. I always start in the top left corner and then work my way down. The edges of your quilt will be on the bias so be careful handling your quilt (no tug-of-war with your quilt top!). 
• When you start pairing blocks together, you are going to have one seam in each pairing that needs to match. Even if you don't pin the rest of your block, place a pin here to make sure that one matches up. I think this pattern is pretty forgiving so if it doesn't match up, life will go on, but it's always satisfying to have nice points.

• There are two different ways to cut your blocks on the diagonal for the top/bottom and side triangles — pay attention to the pattern and make sure you are cutting the right direction.

I think that's it! I will talk more about all of this in the video tomorrow and I will demonstrate cutting my setting triangles and show you how I pin. I would like to repost photos of your finished quilt top or quilt on Instagram so make sure to post an updated photo with the #phoebeqal hashtag and make sure your settings allow me to repost your image in my stories (unless you don't want me to post it). 

This has been so much fun! If you have any thoughts about which quilt you would like to quiltalong to next, let me know.