Zig Zag Nine Patch Progress

I'm often inspired by vintage quilts. In December I posted about one that  I had seen online and that I had decided to make one like it.  This is my progress so far - about half way to a big quilt top. 

It is 94 inches long and consists of alternating columns of 21 and 22 three inch nine patches.  Four columns = 17 inches across.  I'm trying to keep the corner patches of the nine patches the same color in each column  but I think I'll have a few columns of a mixed variety. I'm using three inch nine patches from my boxes of nine patches that have been swapped over the years. 

A few people wondered how I was making it so what follows is an explanation of how I made the column above  with the black cornered nine patches between a red zig and a blue zag. 

First I made sure I had 21 three inch nine patches with black corners. 

Then I cut a 3.5 inch strip of red and a 3.5 inch strip of blue and then further cut them into half HST pieces.  

Then I chain sewed all the red half HSTs to the left side of the nine patches oriented as shown. 

Then I chain pieced the blue half HST to the right side of the nine patch oriented as shown. 

 My units looked like this and I ironed them pressing seams toward the HST. 

 At this point I will show you how the top and bottom of the columns look.  When I'm finished with the quilt I'll trim it 1/4 inch from the point of the green and blue nine patches slicing through the other nine patches 1/4 inch from the center. That will leave some partial nine patches.  Hope I'm explaining this correctly. 

I guess you could trim as you go along but that's just not what I'm doing right now. 

Now back to our black nine patch column. Our column top and bottom nine patches will look like the green column so they need an extra half HST added to the top nine patch of the column and a blue half HST added to the bottom nine patch like above.  

Sew the pieces together as shown above until...

...you have an entire column made. 

Then sew your new column to the previous column.  (Yes, I'll trim the dog ears once the column as sewn together. It's faster for me to do it that way than individually it seems.)

And there you have it.  I actually clip the seam here and there so when I iron it everything will lie flat. 

I'm thinking I'll make about 20 columns. 

Moving it Forward Monday at Em's Scrapbag