Overlapping Octagons is finished.

Following Sujata's challenge in January to replicate one of the quilts in the book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American quilts under the radar", by Roderick Kiracofe, I made the Overlapping Octagons.

Instead of continuing with hourglass blocks at the intersections of the octagons as I did for the first few blocks, I took the fabric of the "sashing" further to form the point. The hour glass blocks gave very bulky seams at the corners of the red pieces but now there is less bulk but more Y-seams!

The original quilt was pieced by hand and I think that if I had done that I may have been finished sooner. Slow going as it was I'm glad I persevered; I'm quite comfortable with Y-seams now!

I quilted the red squares with various FMQ designs, and varying degrees of success! In the "sashing" I followed the seam lines to avoid losing the shape of the octagons. In my view that has worked well and they stand out nicely.

fabrics: scraps from stash
measurements: 38" x 44"
pieced with Aurifil 50 wt light grey
quilted with Aurifil 40 wt dark blue, dark red and bright red.

Now I'm going to look into the book again and see which quilt I would like to make next! 

Happy sewing

Marly.