Arcadia Avenue BOM - Piecing Block 1

...and we're off!  I finally had a day to myself where I could just focus on Block #1.

I grabbed my bag of pieces, a coffee my book and papers and I was ready to start!  Everything was going well with the first few segments....

...then disaster struck.  My first catastrophic error.  I forgot to use my add a quarter ruler and just cut right next to my plastic template and cut right through my fabric and paper :(.  Luckily, I was only 3 seams in, so I cut myself some new pieces and remade this segment to catch up with the other 11 blocks and get back on track.  Oopsie!  The good thing about doing this early on is that I'll remember it and take my time from now on, hopefully preventing it from happening again.

There were no other snafus and I completed the 12 segments.

Here are a couple pictures of my pile of scraps.  Some of the colored ones are quite large.  It seems like a shame to throw them away.  I should sew them together to make crazy fabric (you have no idea how many times I've said I'm going to do this).  Alas, should I separate out the larger ones and set them aside, or just resign to the fact that I'll never get to doing this and throw them away now?

When I sewed my first two segments together, I didn't match up each point.  I wanted to see how it would come out without using that method.  Ultimately I wasn't happy with the points on that seam, so I pinned up the rest of them as I went.

I did a combination of leaving the paper on and removing the paper.  I removed the paper in the picture below in order to press the seam open.  Once I sewed the adjacent segment, I would remove the paper from the middle segment.  I waited till the end of a quilt once to remove all the paper and will never forgive myself.  I have to remove as I go.  Removing as I go seems to work fine for me.  I starch each segment before I trim the final outline, so I haven't had any issues with stretching yet.  Leaving the paper on while sewing the individual segments together was really nice because the paper being there kept the fabric edges from catching under the machine and flipping under.

Here she is!  It took me around 8 hours to complete the sewing on this block.  Not too shabby for a full day's work.  This was by far the most time consuming block I've ever made and I kept thinking I'd be done in "just a little while" and another few hours would go by and I still wasn't done.  I do love it though, I had a blast making the block and seeing it come together.  

Obviously this quilt is going to be for me and me alone as I won't want to part with this amount of hard work any time soon.  Making a block like this is one of the reasons I always struggle when someone asks me "How long does it take to make a quilt?".