Allietare Mystery Quilt Progress

I'm working on Allietare when I can, and not stressing about it when I can't. I am all caught up with cutting at least! I was really excited when Clue 5 had no extra cutting, so I only had to work on cutting out clue 4 in both colorways to catch up on the cutting. I figure, if I at least get everything cut, I can catch up on the sewing as leaders/enders if I need to.

I am furthest along on my men's shirt colorway. I have all of clue 1 done, all of clue 2, most of clue three, one set of clue 4, and one of clue 5. I haven't done any of the knocked off corners on the big neutral rectangles.

Here is a sample of how that shirt colorway is looking. Remember, I moved the colors around, so no, my reds aren't in the wrong place.

On the bright colorway, I am finished clue 1, done part of clue 2, all of clue 3, one set of clue 4, and one of clue 5. Again, I haven't done any knocked off corners on the big rectangles yet.

On my monitor that solid is really looking blue, but it's purple, trust me on this.

I'm going to have to be really careful to keep those HST's oriented correctly on clue 5. Since my neutral in one colorway is light, and my neutral in the other colorway is dark, it would be easy to flip them.

DD#1, who chose the color combinations, asked if I had any guesses on where Bonnie is going with this, and I had to tell her, I've been too busy to even think about it much. I did the math to see how much of the quilt top is accounted for at this point, just so I'd have an idea of how much is left to do before assembly, but aside from that, I'm not really that curious about it, I'll just let it happen.

Besides working on Allietare, I cut out my first rag quilt.

How's that for a stack of squares? I'm jumping right into rag quilting, and I'm making a four layer quilt that will finish at 64x80. DD#3 is always cold these days, and I felt like a flannel rag quilt might be my best bet on keeping her warm in the living room. I bought her an electric blanket for her bed, and that's helping, but she's been piling multiple quilts on top of herself in the living room, and I'm hoping this one will be a better option for her.

I need to go buy a frame for DS the Younger's photo from basic training.

I can put his photo up with his Dad's photo, and both of his grandfather's photos from their times in the military. Our DDIL just moved in with us, along with their two dogs, so they will stay with us, until training is done and they can join him at his first duty station. I'm proud of our family's military history.

If you'd like to see how everyone else is doing on the Allietare Mystery quilt, click here.

Merry Christmas!

We celebrated our Christmas early, since DH is working a 12 hour shift on Christmas Day. We may have little ones in the house, but we don't do the Santa thing, so it's pretty easy for us to move Christmas or any other holiday, and DH works most holidays so someone else can have it off. My personal preference is that he take Thanksgiving and Easter off, but I don't care if he works the rest. Since he is an emergency room nurse, they are never closed, so all the hours must be worked by someone.

We had a nice Christmas celebration, and now I can show you a couple things I was working on.

I took this photo before it was quilted, but I made a set of four placemats for the couple that just got married. I had a bit of fabric left over from their wedding table runners, and I thought some placemats made out of that fabric would remind them of the wedding without being over the top "wedding-ish".

Check out these stacks of microwavable bowl holders! This photo was taken after I had already mailed off four sets of them! I made eighteen sets of three sizes, they are made using 10", 12", and 14" squares. If you'd like to make your own, I used the directions found here.

On my 2015 quest to finish other people's last projects, I finished two lap quilts started by DH's great-aunt. I gave them to my MIL for Christmas.

This one Aunt Elva had assembled into a quilt top, and had a backing folded with it. The half blocks on the bottom cracked me up, and the fact she didn't use the center strips of the blocks as a lattice, but more like two ribbons or fish struck me as odd.

She had three blocks in one colorway, and 17 in another, so I did the best I could with those. There was some damage to the blocks, so I appliqued hearts over the damaged parts before I assembled the top. At least her last projects are now finished.

I still have one project of someone else's that is not finished. It's the quilt started by DH's grandmother. I did get it assembled into a quilt top this year, but have not had time to quilt it. It is staying at our house, since we don't have a quilt made by Granny, so that put it a bit further down the list.

I also made 34 pillowcases for Christmas, 15 kids placemats, 10 potholders, one scrub top, and I'm sure a few things I'm forgetting. I lost count of how much yardage I went through, but at least 75 yards I'm sure.

I was one very spoiled quilter this Christmas, and although I used more fabric than I got for Christmas, I did have some stash enhancement as gifts.

DH bought me 2 sets of quilter's candy fat quarters, one of blenders, one of all fabrics with dots, plus a layer cake. DD#3 got me a purple fat quarter bundle, and a neutral set of fat eighths that didn't make it into the pic. I'll be wrapping the fat quarters onto my small mini-bolts, and can snap a better pic after I finish that.

I scored several quilt books that have been on my Amazon wishlist. I realized Marti Michell's Patchwork System books will work with my Accuquilt Go dies, so I'd like to get a few of those books.

I got this quilting mug that really cracks me up! I'm am quite the coffee drinker, so a mug is always a welcome gift.

I also got some earrings I've been wanting, and a few non-quilty things like lotions. I was pretty spoiled this year!

I'm not linking up with the mystery quilt this week, because I still haven't cut all the strips for clue 4, but I'm working on it. I would imagine I won't have all the sub-cutting done for clue four until sometime next week.

I am working on clue 2 in the shirts colorway, and I'm about halfway done with that. I haven't even started sewing clue two in the brights colorway, but it is all cut out. I sub-cut the stripsets I made for clue 3, and sewed up what I had. I am using scraps for these, so I was just guessing on how much I had. No WOF strips are being used. I ended up with exactly 120 bright four patches, which cracked me up, since that's exactly how many we need. I have 104 four patches in the shirts colorway, so I'll have to make a few more of those.

Since that was a bit confusing, here's the breakdown on how I'm doing on the mystery quilt.

Clue 1
shirt colorway- done, bright colorway- done

Clue 2
shirt colorway- half done, bright colorway- all cut, none sewn

Clue 3
shirt colorway- I need 16 more four patches, bright colorway- done

Clue 4
I am currently working on cutting both colorways, none sewn.

Tomorrow I should have quite a bit of time home alone, and I'm hoping to finish clue 2 in both colorways, as well as finish those last 16 four patches. We'll see what happens. If I get tired of sewing, I will work on cutting out clue four.

DS the Younger is home from the Army for Christmas, and any time I get to spend with him trumps sewing. He's got lots of people to see, and he needs to spend lots of time with his wife, as he should, so when he has time to visit, I'll drop everything to spend time with him. I've already baked lots of his favorite goodies, so that's a plus.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas!

Allietare Mystery quilt-Clue 3

I just finished sewing the last of the Christmas gifts!!! Somehow I feel like I should hear a marching band or similar celebratory music. Before you go thinking I finished with a week to spare, I didn't, we are celebrating Christmas on Sunday, December 20th. Considering I haven't made any Christmas cookies, or any other holiday cooking yet, I'm actually cutting it close.

I had a bit of piecing to do for one of the Christmas presents I was making, so I managed to sew up a bunch of strips sets for clue 3 when I did the other piecing.

One of the great things about sewing up two different colorways is, I don't get sick of sewing the same colors together. Bonnie is doing a great job mixing up the order of which colors we sew when this year anyway, but still, it's great to see totally different colors under my needle. Sewing the orange and purple strips to each other, just had me smiling. This is going to be a fun quilt!

 I'll have a lot more variety when I'm finished sewing up the four patches, but I just sewed up a few to see how they would look.

I got a few of the shirts colorway four patches done too. I'm not sure if I sewed up enough stripsets or not, I'll sub-cut and sew up what I've got, then count and see if I need more.

I won't be doing any sewing for a few days, which my left shoulder will be happy about. Long sewing days makes it cranky, and I've had a lot of long sewing days lately, trying to get the Christmas presents finished.

We've been dogsitting two of our granddogs while DDIL goes to get DS the Younger from Army Basic Training. He graduated basic training this week, gets to come home for Christmas, then goes back for Advanced Individual Training.  The granddogs are a hoot. One is a tiny chiweenie, (chihuahua/dachshund mix) and the other is a Great Dane/Pitbull mix. They are both brindle-coated, so their coats are very similar, even if their builds are not.

The little one gets cold easily, so he makes himself at home on top of any lap, and if no laps are available, he lays on the bigger dog. It just cracks me up!

Here is my youngest, Private Rains. I'm so proud of him, and can't wait to see him tomorrow!

DS the Younger and DDIL took a selfie right after his graduation! I know she was so glad to see him again after the separation, and I'm betting he was just as happy to see her.

So, next few days are family, cooking, holiday stuff and no stitching at all. I'm looking forward to it all, and sometime next week, I'll get back to sewing. The sewing can wait, it's all about people right now!

If you want to see how everyone else is doing on the mystery, click here

Allietare Mystery Quilt- Clue 2

I'm really taking a laid back approach to this year's mystery, even though I am tackling it in two colorways. I'm mostly working on Christmas gifts right now. I finished all the homemade gifts that needed to be mailed, and got those posted this week. Now it's local gifts that need to be finished.

So, with all the Christmas sewing, did I get anything done on clue 2? Yes, enough to give me an idea of what is going on. I got all of clue 2 cut out in both colorways. I sewed up a set of four in each colorway, which took me about 15 minutes.

The shirts colorway is easiest in some respects. The constant gold is in place of Bonnie's constant grey, so the cutting is very similar. I just had to pay attention to the fact that I am using blue instead of red, and red instead of black. When using men's shirts, I try to make sure that I mix stripes and plaids, or at least mix the scale of the prints, to add interest and contrast.

On the brights colorway, my purple background is constant, and the yellow I'm using instead of grey is scrappy. Not knowing how the final quilt will look, I just took a guess, and I am matching my yellows in the same sets of four. Whether that turns out to be right or a mistake, only time will tell.

Now I'm back to working on Christmas presents! We are celebrating Christmas on the 20th, so I'm in time crunch mode, but while everyone else is celebrating Christmas on the 25th, I'll be home alone and sewing on the mystery quilts!

To check out how everyone else is doing on the mystery quilt, click here.

Twice the Mystery

I've done Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts for years now. I've often heard of women doing two different colorways at once, and thought they were a little nuts. Well, I've joined them, and I'm doing two colorways this year. Whether both will end up full-sized versions is still undecided, but we'll see.

My daughter (DD#1) who lives in South Africa chose both colorways, with a few stipulations from me.

I wanted to use men's shirts for one colorway. She was debating between yellow and tan, and I substituted a constant gold. I am substituting the colors as follows

Bonnie's neutral = white
Bonnie's red = blue
Bonnie's black = red
Bonnie's grey = gold
Bonnie's gold = green

So, for clue one, instead of neutrals and grey, I was using neutrals and gold.

 I have 200 done so far, with the rest cut and ready to sew.

For colorway #2, I wanted to use a purple background. It really doesn't photograph well, but it is purple, not blue.

My substitutions are as follows

Bonnie's neutral = purple
Bonnie's red = lime green
Bonnie's black = pink
Bonnie's grey = yellow
Bonnie's gold = orange

So, my clue one colors are purple and yellow.

Again, there are 200 done, and the rest are cut and ready to go.

I am really glad I took the time to straighten up my scrap user system before the mystery started. They were a mess from pulling from them all the time, and now they are sorted, and I can pull from the strip drawers first, and use yardage to fill in any colors not plentiful in the scrap user system.

I am working on sewing Christmas gifts too, so I have no plans to keep up. Bonnie always makes the first clue an easy one, so I would imagine I can finish all of clue one before clue two comes out. I am dividing my time by working on Christmas gifts during the day, and working on the mystery at night. Friday daytime I did pull strips from my strip drawers, and Friday evening I got out my Easy Angle ruler and cut all of one colorway, while I cut the other colorway Saturday night. Sunday afternoon, after spending all morning on Christmas sewing, I spent two hours sewing, and got 400 HST's sewn up. They go pretty fast when they are already paired up before you cut.

I chain pressed short chains of HST's, then cut them apart and cut off the dog ears while watching a comedy show with DD#2. If I can find the time to finish up clue one this week, I will, if not, it's fine, I already made more of unit one than I thought I'd get done right now.

I'm not pressuring myself to have each clue done before the next comes out. I have lots of Christmas sewing to do, along with lots of other holiday related things to do. The thing is, I like the mysteries during the holidays. It gives me an excuse to carve out some time for me, and something I want to do. It's easy to kind of lose yourself during the holiday rush. The mystery quilts give me more to do, yes, but since quilting is my sanity time, it also helps keep me grounded.

On clue one, I cut enough for the full-sized quilt, but whether I continue to do that or not remains to be seen. HST's I can always use, so I had no qualms about cutting for the full sized quilt, even though I might do smaller versions. I'm just taking it one clue at a time, and I'll decide as I go. If I cut for the full sized quilt for every clue, the mystery quilts could always be leader/ender projects for next year.

If you'd like to see how other people are doing on the mystery, check it out here.

An Autumn Wedding

God heard the prayers for good weather for the wedding! It was 76F, a little windy, and sunny. The venue had lovely grassy areas, with lots of trees dropping their yellow leaves in the breeze.

This is one of my favorite photos from the wedding that I've seen so far. The bride was just out of the groom's sight, and they were praying together before the ceremony.

Here's a photo of the twins getting ready for yet another stint at flower girl/ring bearer. These kids should be pros at this by now, it's their third time doing it.

The twins loved playing in the leaves! The trees in our yard don't change color, they just fall off, so they had a blast filling Mr. L's cowboy hat with leaves, throwing them up in the air and yelling, "It's autumn!"

DH and I only managed to dance one dance at the wedding, because we were busy doing things, but we got to do the anniversary dance. If you've never heard of it, all the married couples start out on the dance floor, and the DJ announces different increasing time periods, one day, one month, six months, 1 year, 2 years, etc... If you've been married less than that amount of time, you have to leave the floor, so obviously, the bride and groom are the first gone. Surprisingly, we were the last on the floor with almost 32 years. There were actually a couple people married longer than us at the wedding, but they didn't dance, so we won that by default. All I could think was, "I don't feel old enough to be one of the longest lived couples." ;-)

While I was busy with wedding stuff, a fabric fairy came and dumped more fabric in my sewing room.

The fabric fairy was really my MIL, and she decided the quilts she had planned on making were never going to happen, so she passed the fabric on to me, knowing I'd use it.

Oh, and those sunbonnets?

Here are the other five, before I added lace and ties. They are all finished now, and on their way to South Africa.

This is the granddaughter the sunbonnets are for. Using dirt as sunscreen is and interesting technique, but I'm hoping the sunbonnets will keep her really pale skin from burning.

I finished washing up all the wedding linens today, and I repacked the decorations that ended up at my house. The newlyweds can pick it all up after their honeymoon.

I finally managed to go to the grocery last night, and pick up what I'll need for Thanksgiving dinner. I already know I forgot a couple things, but at least the turkey is thawing in the fridge! It's a small gathering this year, I think around 13 for dinner, and 17 for dessert. Perhaps by the weekend, I'll be back to sewing.

Misc. Projects

I finished the last of the wedding projects, for the wedding on November 21st.

I made four of these table runners, to go on the tables that the bridal party will sit at. They are all starched and pressed, and wrapped around a cylinder so they won't wrinkle.

I finally got around to making some sun bonnets for my youngest grandchild. She's a redhead, and fair as can be, so keeping her covered in the sun is a necessity.

This is the only one completely finished, but three more are started, and I have two more cut out, so she'll get six total. I'm hoping to get them finished this weekend, so I can mail the last Christmas package to South Africa next week. It's spring there, so the sunbonnets should come at a good time, just in time for summer.

Besides finishing the sunbonnets, I'm not likely to have any sewing time in the next two weeks, with company coming, a wedding to help with, then Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving I'll be starting the mystery quilts, and ramping up the Christmas sewing. It will be busy for the foreseeable future.

Making Time for My Daughter

Bonnie Hunter of quiltville fame runs a mystery quilt every winter. This year I wasn't going to do it, because I have a bunch of Christmas presents to make, and I've just been crazy busy. Here's the thing, last year my daughter in South Africa chose the colors, and the quilt went to her when it was done. She loved choosing the colors, following along with the clues, and seeing how her color choices came together. This year she asked if she could choose the colors again, but she's OK with not receiving the quilt.

What to do? I am legitimately busy, but there are so few things I can participate in with my daughter overseas. I'd be fine missing this year's mystery quilt, but I'm not OK with not doing something with my oldest daughter. So, she chose colors with a couple conditions on my end.

1) I am not planning on keeping up with the clues, but I can and will make a few of each unit as I go along. I will make enough to be able to make some blocks when that time comes.

2) I will let her choose 2 colorways, with the condition that one uses the men's shirts I have, and the other uses a purple background.

3) I don't have to make these into full sized quilts, if they end up being baby quilts because that's all I have time for, that's what they'll be. That said, I'm not ruling out full-sized quilts, if I really like how they are coming out, one of both may just become leader/ender projects for next year.

For the men's shirts, she was thinking of a red and white lighthouse on the beach. She chose red, white, blue, green, and tan. This was what I pulled from my shirt stash.

The more I looked at it, the more I was unhappy with the tans, and her second choice was yellow, but I simply didn't have enough yellow shirts. She hasn't seen my change yet, but I swapped out the tans for a constant gold.

That's MUCH better! More contrast with the whites, and no matter what units it ends up being in, it will stand on it's own.

So the men's shirt colorway is pulled. For the other colorway, I wanted a purple background, because I found a purple duvet cover that was large enough to be the background, and I love using odd colored backgrounds.

I think we are going with purple and brights. She was debating another colorway, which I really liked, but couldn't have gone very scrappy on. I'm trying not to buy fabric for these. I have more of these colors, but I know I'll hit my strips drawers first, so I'm not going to bother pulling any more fabrics unless I need them.

The drastically different palettes will keep me entertained, and I can make some progress on some other projects as leaders/enders while I'm working on the mystery quilt. I think I will still have enough time to get the Christmas presents done, since I'm not trying to make all the units for both quilts. If I spend one day per week on the mystery, and just make what I can in that time frame, I will have plenty of Christmas sewing time.

I actually really like Bonnie's color choices this year, and so does my daughter. My thing is, I don't want a quilt that looks like hundreds of other quilts, thus, I switch my colors. Now my daughter has to decide which color substitutes for which color, so I can make my substitution cards to keep me straight when following the clues. If you want to see Bonnie's colors, check out her post here.

By the way, I've finished "de-boning" the shirts I bought in Flagstaff, and several of them will be used for the mystery quilt.

Another thing I did this week was make a capes for the twins to wear to Comicon.  I only had a day, so I used fleece, and faked a pattern.

Miss S is wearing her blue cape, but Mr L didn't end up wearing his purple one. Not too bad for a quickie job, and they'll be great for playing dress-up.

Wedding Preprations

Another wedding I'm helping with, more wedding stuff to do. This week we got all the wedding favors finished, I did some minor alterations on the petticoats, and I made the garter.

The bride wanted a hot pink and camo garter, so here it is. The camo fabric is scraps from the wedding quilt.

I still need to make the table runners for the head tables, but that will have to wait until the weekend. DD#3 and the twins are going to a comicon this weekend, and although they thought they'd be able to find a hooded cape to go with Miss S's costume, they didn't, so guess who is making hooded capes tomorrow, so they can use them the next day. Mr. L's costume doesn't require a cape, but as soon as he heard his sister was getting one, he wanted one too. I only have one day to make two hooded capes, so we went and bought some fleece so I didn't have to bother with hemming. I cut it really close on the amount of fleece I bought, so no scraps to deal with.

It's been a sad week around here. We had to put down our dog, the litter-mate to one we lost earlier this year. Those two dogs were so important to our family, having them both gone just breaks my heart. We got 12 years with one, and almost 12 1/2 with the other, and for their size, that is a good long life. I hope they are playing together over the rainbow bridge.

We still have one dog in the house, DD#3's puppy, who is quite the troublemaker. I'm hoping he calms down a bit as he gets a bit older. Just this week he has chewed up a Super Soaker, 2 bottle of bubbles, two dog dishes and a fly trap. He's not even a little puppy, he's ten months old now. We give him all kinds of chewies all the time, but he always finds something he's not supposed to chew on. The twins are already begging to put up the Christmas tree, but I'm wondering if the puppy is going to eat it. If anyone has any insight for us on taming an aggressive chewer, let me know. He's already been to obedience training, and will leave it when we tell him to, but as soon as we aren't watching, he's back at it.

Destination Fall

Here in Southern Arizona, we are a little short on fall color. We can go up Mt. Lemmon and see fall colors, but down here in the valley, we just don't get much. On the upside to that, there is almost always something blooming here, so we get flowers all year long.

DH and I were pretty done in from all the activities we've had around here, so we planned a four day-three night getaway to Flagstaff, Arizona.

Flagstaff has mostly pines, and some of the Aspens were already bare, but we did find some color.

We found some reds here and there, but no oranges. I grew up in New England which has amazing fall color, and the trees here just can't compete, but it was still pretty, especially with snow capped mountains in the mix.

Arizona has some things that New England doesn't, like volcanoes. Can you see the crater where the top of the mountain blew off at some point? Most people don't think of Arizona as a volcano area, but we actually have a bunch, not all of which are extinct, but just dormant.

We stopped at this little chapel, and there is a bunch of graffiti inside, but surprisingly, it is all respectful. Notes to God, memorials of loved ones passed on, praise and thanks, but nothing negative. It was a sweet, peaceful spot. The back wall is all windows facing the forest.

One of the things we did on our trip was hit a bunch of thrift stores and antique stores. I didn't buy anything at the antique stores, but I had a shopping spree at the thrift stores. All tolled, I spent just under $100. For some, a $100 shopping spree is nothing, for others, out of their range. Let's go over what I got for the $100, and you tell me how I did.

I found a Levi's denim jacket, that looked like it had been worn no more than twice, not even the inside labels had any wear at all. Those go for at least $70, and this one works for DD#3, which is who I bought it for. I also bought her a long skirt worth about $50, so right there, in value, I'm over my $100 spent. 

I bought the twins 11 items of clothing, including a couple jackets. I also found a Spiderman hooded towel for them.

I bought myself a blouse and skirt.

I bought four 100% cotton sheets to use as quilt backings.  I also found some fabric scraps, some fat quarters, and six 1+ yard pieces of fabric.

I also bought 46 men's shirts, one pair of pajama pants, and a dress, all 100% cotton, that I plan on using for quilting.

I found a couple quilting books, and...

a buttonholer that will work with my Rocketeer!

So, how is that for under $100? I'm pretty happy with it, and DH didn't complain once. He knows how much I love to quilt, and knows I try hard to keep my costs down, even though quilting isn't an inexpensive hobby. We found a couple vintage machines, a couple of which DH wanted to buy for me, but I passed. At this point, I have a wishlist of machines, and if it's not on the list, I'm not really tempted. Even if it's on the list, I'm pretty frugal most of the time, and I don't want to spend too much on them. We saw vintage machines everywhere from $10 to WAY overpriced, mislabeled as rare, machines for over $300. Any $10 machine is tempting in a way, just to rescue it and save it from a landfill, but I refrained, even on those. I can't bring them all home, even the $10 ones.

The weather here at home changed while we were gone, so I FINALLY got to shut off the air conditioner! I'm not fond of summer at any time, but really, high 80's at the end of October seem a little much. I'm so glad it's finally cooled down, just in time for November.

Gifting Another Wedding Quilt

Yesterday was the bridal shower, so I got to give the bride her wedding quilt. The groom-to-be came over to help pick up gifts, so I made them wrap up in the quilt so I could get a photo.

Here is a photo of the quilt all spread out.

The bride is a fun combination of sports jock, outdoorswoman, hot pink and bling. The groom is definitely the outdoorsy type, loves fishing and camping. I tried to make a quilt that represented both of them, and this is what I came up with.

The quilt caught quite a bit of attention on one of my quilting groups, so let me break it down for anyone interested in making one. I didn't have a pattern, this was just the results of me playing around with EQ7.

It is a two block quilt, which I make a lot of, because you get a lot of secondary designs with two blocks. I had a bunch of leftover 1.5" cut strips from another project, so the pink and white nine patches were my starting point.I didn't have near enough leftover strips to make all these nine patches, it was just my starting point.

 

Sorry for the blurry pic, but I just enlarged a section of another photo to show the block. I'm sure this block has a name, but I don't know what it is. It is like a 54/40 or fight block, but with nine patches instead of four patches. In the wedding quilt, there are 61 of these blocks. Each nine patch unit finishes at 3", so the nine patches can be either sewn out of 1.5" cut squares, or 1.5" strips sewn into stripsets then subcut into 1.5" units. The triangle in a square units also finish at 3", so if you are using a tri-recs ruler, use 3.5" strips. I have the 3" triangle in a square die for my Go cutter, so I just used that. You'll need five nine patches and four triangle in a square units for each of these blocks. 

This is block two, it's just a variation of a churn dash block. I used a nine patch for the center square, and for the corner HST's I matched the outer triangle to the star points in the other block. If you are using an Easy Angle ruler, cut your HST's from 3.5" strips. I used the 3" HST die for my Go cutter. The rail subunits are made with 2" cut strips by either making brown/khaki stripsets and subcutting to 3.5" so they'll finish at 3", or just cutting 2" x 3.5" rectangles and sewing two together, whatever is your preference. There are 60 of these blocks in the wedding quilt. 

Since my blocks finish at nine inches, and I set them 11x11, the center of this quilt is 99x99 inches. The pink inner border finishes at 1", so it's cut at 1.5", and I cut the camo outer border at 6.5". Before quilting the quilt was 113" square, but it lost a few inches after quilting. I quilted it on my Bernina 440, so no, I didn't send it out for quilting, and no, I don't have a longarm. 

The finished quilt has almost exactly 5,000 pieces. The first block has five nine patches 5x9=45, plus four triangle in a square units 4x3=12, 45+12=57 pieces in each block x 61 blocks = 3,477 pieces in block A

Block B has one nine patch=9, four rail units 4x2=8, and four HST's 4x2=8. 9+8+8=25 x 60 blocks =1,500 pieces in block B. 3,477+1,500=4,977 pieces plus borders and backing which were both pieced in this case, so right about 5,000 pieces. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and if I get a lot of questions, I will try to make a tutorial in a couple weeks.