If you haven’t started listening to the Off Kilter Quilter podcast, I suggest that you go over and start right away!
TFQ taught me this method of putting quilts together. I have adopted it as my own and use it for block quilts. Very occasionally I’ll put a long border on after the center of the quilt is complete, but otherwise I try to avoid the long seams required to put quilts together in rows.
The basic idea is to put the quilt together as you would a block. Sew smaller pieces together to make larger pieces. I avoid sewing in rows as I think the quilt gets out of square if you sew it together in rows.
This step makes a larger piece.
This will be for the bottom of Block 1 in the drawing in Step 2.
This way of sewing a quilt together makes the pieces much easier to manage, because you are mostly handling smaller pieces.
You can also divide the border into blocks (plan it that way as you make your quilt) so you can include border pieces as chunks.
You have to pay attention to what you do with the corners if you choose to add the borders this way. This technique works better if you are making a self bordering design.
Refer to the drawing of your pieces in Step 1.
You have to sew the bottom sashing + cornerstone to Block 3 and Block 4.
You really need to do the two steps above before Step 5B2 even though my numbering is off. Sorry about that.
I got a little ahead of myself in my drawing. Sew the sashing and the cornerstone to Block 2 and then sew Block 2 (with side and bottom sashing and one cornerstone) to Block 1 with all of it’s sashing.
The above step will make your next chunk.
After this first chunk, do the same things for the rest of the blocks in your quilt and keep putting chunks together into larger and larger pieces.
Let me know if you have questions.