Daybreak quilt top finished ! Semi-tutorial

  I wanted to clarify how I pieced my blocks for this quilt top (Pattern I'm referring to is in this post).

Starting with the 10 inch blocks that were supplied with the kit, I stacked the four coordinating prints of each color range, and then I cut 3 1/2 inches in from each side, vertically, leaving a 3 inch piece in the middle

Having cut 1 inch wide strips of white, I left the strips whole, and chain-pieced the left 3 1/2 inch wide pieces to one strip, and the middle 3 inch wide pieces to a second strip.  After piecing these, I pressed the seams toward the print fabric, and cut the pieces apart, trimming the white strip even with the print fabric.

Placing these pieces back in the order that they were cut apart, I then joined all three print pieces back together (with the white pieces now in-between).

Now, I turned the blocks one time, so that the white strips ran horizontally, and cut these blocks in just the same manner that I had originally cut the 10 inch squares......3 1/2---3---3 1/2 .

These pieces were then chain-pieced to white one-inch strips just exactly the same way as the first time around,  pressed toward the print, cut apart, and reseamed to make the finished block.

The square in the upper right hand corner was lined up with the 2 3/4 lines along the white strips, horizontally and vertically.

At this point the block was oversized, so, realizing that the block is supposed to be 9 inches square  before assembling the quilt top, I found the centerpoint of the center square, and trimmed the block to be a perfect 9 inch square.  I would never have gotten that nice of a block if I had cut the block down to begin with as the pattern suggested.  I'm not disparaging the pattern creator,........I'm just saying that this is the method that works more precisely for me, and I thought maybe it would help someone else to try this method.

After making the blocks, I then chain-pieced each block to the 1 1/2 inch sashing strip that goes between the blocks in a vertical row, trimmed the strips even with the blocks, and finished piecing each vertical row. 

The rest of the assembly was just made up of adding the 3 inch wide sashes between the vertical rows, and around the outside edge of the quilt top.

I ADORED working with these fabrics, so crisp and clean and pure of color.......even hubby kept commenting on how pretty it was.    Thanks JodieAnn for the fun commission !  I'll try to get it mailed off to you tomorrow, Lord willing.