Map of the States

These are some long overdue photos of a quilt I made for Harv's mom this past Christmas.

Like I said, long overdue.

I made the blocks using the "map of the states" method at Oh, Fransson. 

This method was fussy as you-know-what but there is something nice about a technique in which all of the planning is done up front.  All of your creative decisions are made at the start so once you've made them, you're just assembling, not thinking.  Sometimes I'm really in the mood to just sew and not think.

Also, I dig puzzles.   Above you see my original, uncut templates, the pieces cut up and seperated by color, the pieces ironed to their corresponding fabric which is cut with a 1/4" seam allowance and then organized back into groups by block. 

I used nine different color groups and bought myself a lovely new box of Crayola markers for the task.  The nice thing about markers as opposed to colored pencils is you don't have to worry about anything sticking to your iron.
Coloring is fun.