Finishing my block goals on the next to last day of the month, I had to look to the outer limits of the quilt to find some sashing that I could accomplish quickly. It turns out that sashing A12 and A13, in the top right corner of the quilt, only requires one sashing piece and two seams. Perfect timing for this month when I only had a day to wrap up my sashing goal!

Needless to say, those two went together pretty quickly. The sashing of blocks B12 and B13, right below them, was more problematic. Block B12 was the one where I did reverse appliqué, so it has two layers of fabric at the edges, which was a little tougher to hand stitch through than I bargained for. Still, I made it happen.

Block B13 was one of the first blocks I stitched (I just checked, and it was actually block #3). It was clearly made before I really internalized what a scant quarter inch was. I marked the quarter inch stitching lines on the insides of the pieces, and then promptly stitched just outside of them, making for a bigger block than the prescribed size.

I had not marked the stitching lines on the edges of the block at all – this was in that phase where I clearly didn’t think I would ever stitch the blocks together. Fast forward nearly eight years, and I needed some stitching lines to sew it to the neighboring blocks. So, I scrambled to mark the outer stitching lines before I left the house, marking a quarter inch in from the edge.

When I got to my destination (a Crafternoon at work), I tried to pin the sashing strip to the block and quickly realized that this was not going to go well. The block was nearly a quarter inch longer than the sashing strip.

And my travel kit only had a 4″ ruler in it, making it difficult to measure and redo the marks on a 5″ block (technically, 5-3/16″). So, I improvised. I’d marked the center point of each side of the block as usual, so I measured 2.25″ from there to each edge to mark the stitching lines. It was good enough to get one piece of sashing sewn on during the Crafternoon.

When I got home, I was able to mark the exact center of the block with a dot. Then I used that dot, the mark on the center of each side, and a full-size ruler to properly mark the seam allowances all the way around. You can see the seam allowance is way bigger than 1/4″ in some places (and also how far outside the stitching lines I stitched in some places back in 2016):

This was excitingly one of those sashing sections where I could sew it to another section, and then sew that to yet another section, so I end up with another 4×4 grid of blocks completed (this one’s in the upper right corner).

It’s so exciting to see it all coming together. Now I need to decide whether I’m ready to assemble one of the triangle border sections (the real outer limits of the quilt), or whether to continue on with sashing the square blocks.