Your Favorite Passion

I just wanted to share a quilt top that I just finished! I actually started it way back in May. I knew that my friend, aka The Twilight Evangelist, was going to be moving during the summer. :( She thought it would be end of July/August. I also knew that I wanted to make her a Twilight themed quilt as a going away gift. I figured I'd have time to get it done and be able to give it to her before she left. But then one day she called to say that they had just found out that they'd have to move in just 2 weeks! I started right away paper piecing the main blocks-the book covers. And, I didn't have time to complete the quilt before she moved. But I figured I'd finish it over the summer and send it to her. Well, summer came and went and I didn't work on the quilt at all. Got caught up in all the summer activities-camping and traveling and enjoying family. Recently, though, I realized that I hadn't finished the quilt and the release of another of the movies is coming up so I decided that I better get on it and get it done. So, this last week I've been working on it, and today I finally finished the top! Yay! I found the paper piecing patterns online but the rest of the design I sort of made up as I went. I cut up the rest of the black, red and white fabrics that I used in the paper pieced blocks and made Disappearing Nine Patch blocks. Basically I just made however many I could out of the fabric I had left. And once I got them done and I laid everything out, including the paper pieced blocks, I had EXACTLY the right number of Disappearing Nine Patches that I needed. Wow! Serendipity! Except then I realized that after I sewed the Nine Patch blocks back together, due to the seam allowances they'd end up just 1/2" smaller than the paper pieced blocks. Ack! I thought about cutting down the paper pieced blocks but ultimately dismissed that idea because some of the blocks had details near the edges which I didn't want to cut off. Which lead me to sewing sashing strips to make up the difference. And I figured that since I was doing sashing I'd go ahead and put red around the paper pieced blocks to highlight them a bit. I used black for the rest. And this is what I ended up with...And just at this very moment I realized that the block in the exact center is UPSIDE DOWN! (insert banging head on wall here) NOOOOOOO!!!!! Please excuse me while I go cry...