En Provence parts 6 & 7 - the final clue

Bonnie Hunter posted the last clue for her mystery quilt "En Provence" on New Year's Day, which took me completely by surprise; I hadn't expected it for another 5 days. Fortunately Dasha, in Australia, alerted me and I've been crazily sewing every free minute since. This is the sum of my progress to date:

and two blocks partly chain-pieced.

I only made half the number of units in each clue, which should be enough for eight blocks but I need nine. I do have some units left, but some are almost finished. There will be one more set to be completed this week. then I'll move on to the rest of the sashing, and the border.

When I join the blocks to make a top I follow Bonnie Hunter's webbing method but I'd like to show how I join the units together in such a large block. In order to avoid inadvertently changing the unit's orientation when walking from design wall to sewing machine I made a couple of design boards from a piece of wadding stapled onto the side of a cardboard box (I didn't have to drink the wine first!).

block laid out on the design wall

I start in the top left-hand corner of the block and stack the units of the first column in order behind it.

column 1, row 1

pick up column 1 row 2 behind the first unit, and so on

until all the units in column 1 are stacked, in order, under the first one ...

... and put on the design board, without changing the orientation of any of the units

I do the same with the second column, and so on.

Finally I have five stacks of five blocks each with the top row visible on the top of the pile

I repeat this process for a second block and then I'm ready to start sewing.

Block 1: I pick up the unit in row 1 column 2 and lay it face down on its left hand neighbour (row 1 column1) and sew these two together. Without breaking the thread ...

... I stay with these two piles and repeat until each unit in pile 2 has been chain-pieced to its neighbour in pile 1.

 

Block 2: then, without cutting the thread, I join columns 1 and 2 of block 2 in the same way.
When I've done that, I separate block 1 from block 2, which is still under the needle.

the first two columns of block 1 joined and ready for column 3

Back to block 1: I then add the units in pile 3 to columns 1 and 2.When that pile is completely added ...
Back to block 2: ... I separate block 2 and add pile 3 to columns 1 and 2 of block 2.

the third pile added to block 1; time to start adding the third pile to block 2

I repeat until all the units of both blocks are joined in rows.

Then it's time to press and to join the rows of each block.

two blocks with the units joined horizontally into rows, with not one unit turned or twisted.

It isn't possible to alternate the blocks here, but I've been using the sashing units as leaders and enders between joining the rows.

(I'm much quicker joining the 50 units of two blocks than I've been in writing all this!)
I hope you can follow my process! If you have any suggestions for improvements I'd be happy to read them.

Finally, a word about leaving a comment. I really enjoy reading comments from other quilters, and in my three years of blogging almost all have been positive. I would like to reply to everyone who comments on my blog. However over the past few weeks I have received comments from "no-reply bloggers" In such cases I always check the commenter's  profile, but sometimes there's no clue there. Then I'm afraid that's the end of the line. I really would like to reply to those who comment on my blog posts, especially if they ask a question. On the tabs at the top of my posts there is one called "no-reply status" which gives instructions for rectifying your blog settings. Usually it's your Google+ settings which block the return contact but as long as your email address is in your Google+ profile I can find you, after a bit of sleuthing. If you've been wondering why no-one writes back perhaps it would be a good idea to check if your email address is somewhere in your profile. However, if you don't want a reply, that's what you'll get - NO-REPLY!

Have a nice weekend; I just read there's quilt-cam on Sunday.

I am linking up to 

Hop over there; more than a hundred links have already been posted.

Happy sewing

Marly.