At last, time to finish a quilt

This group quilt has been sewn together for several weeks but I had no time to quilt it and add a border (black) until now. I've been engrossed in the anthology I wrote about a couple weeks so.  But the book has reached the completed layout phase and goes to the printer Monday or Tuesday, so I have  had the week-end to finish this. (I spent a couple days doing Christmas shopping and the wrapping is nearly complete). This odd block was a year-long series of swaps on Swap-Bot's Quitls-n-Things group.  It required the two center blocks be: one mostly black the other mostly white. The swappers were instructed on the surrounding color/pattern

When the swap ended I had received 24 squares  from panters. That wasn't enough so I made 18 more to have a quilt with 42 squares arranged in seven rows of six and then sashed with plain back. It was fascinating to sew together because I realized there is a huge range of fabrics. With six pieces in each square (9" each) that's a total of 336 pieces. Of course there are some duplicates but, in fact, as I sewed the squares together I realized that probably no more than 20 percent seem to appear more than once. So there are, roughly, 275 different cotton printed fabrics in this quilt. It's delightful to look over it and see such design/creativity in the various patterns. It's an adult sort of "I Spy" quilt. Happily as of today, it has it's border and is finished.  And as I always do with new quilts, I will initiate it by sleeping under it tonight.