Hourglass Autograph Quilt, Piecing

After some fun with the ink (always test for water-fastness), I have finally assembled all of the squares into a quilt top.  The inspiration is an c. 1830-1850 quilt from Pennsylvania (options considered here, first update here).

Cascading hourglasses just felt appropriate for this
(very meta about living history) quilt.

Mine is somewhat scaled down from the the original; I originally intended to make a 13 x 13 block quilt top, with striped border, which would work out to the full 105" square quilt.  When I actually started laying out the blocks, however, I realize just how overly generous such a quilt would be, and decided to scale it down to 11 x 11 with the border.  It's still quite large, and should prove comfortable when I next find myself sleeping on the ground at an event.

To start, I cut out sixty 6.5" white squares for the signatures.  I then cut some 244 4" squares (61 white, the other 183 out of reproduction fabric scraps, mostly dress left-overs).  These were each cut in half diagonally, giving the 488 triangles needed to make 61 hourglass blocks:

A sample block (sideways). This one is made from Elise's dress scraps, 
to accompany her autograph square.

As previously mentioned, the 'hourglass variation' here is basically a three-print broken plate with the white upper right and lower left corners merging into the background.  The trickiest bit was laying out the blocks to piece the top together--I kept shifting things around to avoid concentrating the darker or light prints in one area, or placing several blocks with the same print near each other.  Where I had dress fabric from a particular individual, I tried to put at least one piece of it adjacent to their signatures (and briefly tried to match favorite colors, though that endeavor was soon abandoned).  Of course, by time I actually started sewing the block together, all of the prints had migrated into clusters.

This block of text was written in one attempt.
My name required three.

I supplemented the autograph blocks with quotations from period songs and favorite novels. The block right below center has a Victor Hugo quote which I have adopted as my living history motto:

L'histoire néglige presque toutes ces particularités, et ne peut faire autrement; l'infini l'envahirait. Pourtant ces détails, qu'on appelle à tort petits—il n'y a ni petits faits dans l'humanité, ni petites feuilles dans la végétation—sont utiles. C'est de la physionomie des années que se compose la figure des siècles. (Les Miserables, 1.3.1)

There's also one anachronistic quote which serves as my cheeky alternative living history motto:

Le seul courage est de parler à la première personne.

After the blocks were joined, I added chintz border.  At the moment, all three layers are basted together, and the long process of hand-quilting has commenced.  This quilt is about three times the surface area of my quilted petticoat, so I would estimate 180 hours of hand-quilting...except that I chose a triple diamond pattern which is much denser than the diamonds and lines of the petticoat.

I pin with a little help from my friends.
Who happen to be books and/or bricks.