My Dodecagon Quilt Top!!

 While I gave myself the "one monthly goal" challenge to use the entire month of February to get the five large sections of my dodecagon quilt together, once it started to happen I was anxious to see the finished top because it is so beautiful!!

(My pictures are a bit dark -- blaming cold cloudy Ohio winter days -- but you get the idea.)

I calculated that I needed to stitch twelve 1" seams every day to be finished!

First the upper right corner. 

Then the lower right corner!

And the lower left corner!

On Monday evening, I pushed to finish the upper left corner so I could take it for "show and tell" at the EPP group I attend at my local quilt shop, The Quilted Thimble in Chesterland, Ohio.

Three of the "tall" gals held it up for me and while it isn't a perfect picture, you get the idea.

The top is 70" wide and will be 97" long when I add a rows of these 80 modified hexies to the top and bottom to square up those edges.  They are all basted and I'm currently stitching them into two long bands to join the quilt top.

I made these pieces by printing out several sheets of 1" hexagons onto light cardstock.

I use this website to create a PDF which I can print out - click HERE. 

Then I cut them apart, a single sheet at a time as you see below -- the pieces with an "X" are sloppy cuts and needed to be discarded in the interest of accuracy. 

I made twenty-one dodecagon blocks using templates and papers from Marge Sampson-George (now available world wide through Broderie on Etsy).

The layout I used is my own design - a combination of several ideas I've seen for mosaic quilts over the years.  Marge's pattern uses 42 dodecagons and sets them together with a single band of hexagons. 

 I have counted and counted and counted -- my numbers might be off a couple but I cut and basted and stitched -- 348 pink hexagons, 216 yellow hexagons, 564 black hexagons, 954 green hexagons, plus 80 modified green hexagons for the upper and lower edges and 64 half hexagons for the sides for a total of 2226 (give or take a couple) hexagons. Most of the prints are reproductions or pieces that blend well with them -- all of them from my deep, deep stash.  Even the beautiful floral fussy cut motifs in the center was a piece I hoarded back in my shop keeping days!

The color scheme evolved as I played in my stash making the dodecagons -- from the beginning I wanted to use reproduction prints but I could not have told you what the color scheme was going to be at that point.

I've pulled some big hunks of fabric for backing auditions and I don't know how I will quilt this other than to say I intend to do it by hand.  Hopefully, I'll be quilting it soon - but I have a sweater to finish knitting and the applique of my #sharkdinnerbom tiles to finish before I dedicate my hand stitching time to quilting this!

In conclusion, I have to say "I can't believe this is all together".  It's taken about 3 years and a rough estimate of around 500 hours of stitching time.  It's a huge achievement and reinforces my belief that making steady use of 30 minutes here and there eventually produces the results!

If you'd like to revisit some of my past posts about the construction of this quilt top, just type "dodecagon" into the search box and a list will pop up for your reading pleasure!

So exciting!!

Enjoy the weekend!

Mary

Linking up this week with TGIFF -- check it out for a cute scrappy quilt idea, too!