The Countdown to Christmas Quilt Along - Piecing and layout variations

Welcome back to the next post for the Countdown to Christmas Quilt Along.  Today, we are talking about piecing and layout variations.  Shown below is a copy of the schedule so you can see where we are at and what comes next:

• August 19th - Announcement of Giveaway and sponsors
• September 2nd - Quilt Along begins:  Choosing fabrics and fabric requirements
• September 16th - Cutting 
• September 30th - Applique techniques (machine, hand, puff-paint, ironed on).  The options are endless for how you would like to add your numbers to the pockets.  
• October 14th - Piecing and layout variations
• October 28th - Quilting ideas
• November 11th - Binding
• November 25th - The Big Reveal and ideas for what to put in the pockets.

If you want to see more details on the Quilt Along please go here.  Remember you can join in on the fun at any time!

Both Janice and I felt that the instructions for piecing the quilt top were rather straight forward.  Janice chose to use the "sequential" layout and you can see her post about it here.  I chose to do the "random" layout because my daughter knows her numbers rather well and I wanted her to practice recognizing them, so she has to search for them.  I absolutely love how it turned out.

I think it needs borders, but I am not going to add them because I think then it will make the quilt top too big.  It is already on the large size, but I still do love how it has turned out.  Here is a couple more pictures of it.

Now we are moving to my "favorite" part of the quilting process, which is the quilting.  Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of space to do a lot of fancy quilting, but I think it will be fun nonetheless.  I can't wait to see your finished quilt tops.  You all have been making some really great progress!  Don't forget when we are all finished, there are some really great prizes for those who do linkup their "final project".  The linkup will be open for the next two weeks.

Happy Quilting!