Here is the design for my next quilt. I have approximately 3435 2 1/2 inch squares. The next lowest odd square is 3249, 57 * 57. So if I make a Trip Around the World with those dimensions, using 1/4 inch seam, it will be 114 x 114 inches. This is slightly too big. So I could use the wider presser foot as a guide, and the squares would work down to 1 29/32 inches (I did this and measured). 57 times this is 108 plus a fraction. This will do - it will make a quilt 9 feet x 9 feet. I think it should actually end up a bit smaller than this.
57 is a magic number for me this year, it is how old I am right now, and it is the year I was born. So time to start. In the diagram above we can see we need 4 x 28 (112) loops with 29 different colors each, plus one extra square for the middle. So I need 112 each of 29 different colors.
I think rather than go through the exercise of sewing 112 loops and then picking them apart at different points and creating four panels with rows going in different directions, I will use this diagram to arrange each quadrant and then make piles of squares for each column. I'll have 57 columns. I want the first pass to yield 32 columns, so I'll sew together 25 pairs of columns. Then 7 left over makes 32. Then I'll sew pairwise sets until I have all 57 rows.
Then sew together 25 rows, then sew rows pairwise until the thing is finished. Done! Easy.
