Trying Something New - Quilt as You Go Technique

I was inspired by the slew of potholders I recently finished to try to do a "quilt as you go" baby quilt just to see if it was any faster or easier.  I don't have as many scraps here as I do down south but dumped what I had on my sewing machine table.  These are the first four blocks I did using a more select palette than I eventually chose!  

This was the end of day 2 and you can see that there is more color.  I am using my phone for photos so not as evenly exposed as I do with my camera -- just keep forgetting to bring it upstairs!

End of day 3 -- it is getting there and I am getting faster and faster.  I only need 10 more blocks so I spent a little time picking out the middle strips for those last ten blocks.  I make the blocks by first putting a strip down the middle and then adding strips to the sides.  Then I iron and trim.

This is the end of Day 4 and all the blocks are done and the quilt will measure 42 x 42 as the sashing will not add to the width or length and I am not adding borders.  I got the timing of the blocks down to about 9 minutes each.

The sad part is that the pile of strips looks as big as it did when I started which just confirms that those scraps breed at night when the lights are off!

I decided to go with yellow sashing on the front and a green on the back that matches the backing fabric pretty well.  I tried to have a little yellow in each of the blocks on the front.  I cut 7 in x 1 in strips for the front and 1 5/8 in strips for the back which I folded in  half.  I figured that a little extra on the back would insure that when I sewing the back strips down, the stitching on the front of the quilt would fall outside the sashing.  I was moderately successful but will today increase those strips to 1 3/4 inches in width and will also change the bobbin thread color.  Putting them together went more smoothly than I thought it might but did require some careful pinning.  We will see how it goes today!

If I ever do this kind of quilting again, I will do much much larger blocks which I think would be more time effective.  These blocks are 7 x 7 which is the size of my potholders.