Quilt Finish: Sunshine Plus Quilt

This baby quilt is a commissioned project that utilized a lot of the 2 1/2" squares that I had cut from my scraps recently.  In fact, all of these colored squares except for 4 came from my pre-cut scrap bin - which feels great!

I pieced this quilt in a slightly-unusual way: 2D piecing (my name for it).  I laid the quilt out on my design wall, and then when everything was the way I wanted it, I gathered the vertical rows in to piles. I sewed vertical row A to row B like you would for normal chain-piecing. But then instead of cutting them apart, I then took the first blocks (top of the rows) and sewed row C to the AB units. When I got through all the blocks in row C, I then sewed row D to the ABC units. Make sense? When all of the vertical seams were done this is what I had: (see below).

Normally at this point I would stop and press all the seams in alternating directions so that the squares would nest.  However, I decided not to press yet: I just used my fingers to make sure the seams were going the right directions as I sewed horizontal row by row together.

I worked from the top down (though it really doesn't matter what is up or down), and stopped in the middle for the above picture.

When all the seams were sewn, I pressed everything all at once and was done with the top! The above picture shows the assembled quilt top prior to pressing.

I quilted it with diagonal straight lines through all of the white blocks (and there fore through the center of the plus), backed it in an adorable sunshine print from Erica Hite's Nursery Rhymes for Windham Fabrics, and bound it in an old text print by Laurie Wisbrun.

Quilt Stats:
There are 437 2 1/2" squares in this quilt and it measures approximately 38" by
46".