New Japanese Quilt

I'm excited to be working on a new quilt for our bed to begin the new year. Last year I started this japanese style quilt, now I am making progress on it and hope to finish it soon! The design is a combination of snowball block, with black corners and a 3-piece strip block, put together in units of four. The fabrics are all japanese prints I've collected, in many colors. A few are directly from Japan and most are reproduction prints made in the US.

I pieced the strip blocks with grasshopper fabric in the center, love that name! Then I cut the strips into blocks. The snowball blocks are made with black triangles in each corner, to form a hexagon.

I decided to design this king size quilt to be a perfect balance of squares, since the bed is almost square (78x80). It will be made up of 96 squares, in units of 4 blocks, and then 16 large square units of 16 blocks each!  I plan to try the quilt as you go method, since it is so large, where I will quilt each unit of 16 squares separately and attach the units together to finish the quilt. I'll let you know how it goes!

If you are interested in quilting ideas with japanese fabrics, here is a great book! I also like Japanese Quilt Blocks  and Japanese Quilt Inspirations by Susan Briscoe.

 I can't wait to see how the finished quilt looks on our bed!