Chicken Salad Quilt Background Blocks and Assembly

Well, the chickens are done and now it’s time to add the background blocks for Lori Holt’s Chicken Salad quilt, using her Cook Book line from Riley Blake.

In the Chicken Salad Sew Along Guide, the quilt is laid out on page 10.

You can certainly mix and match your background blocks as much as you’d like, or if you’re like me, you want your quilt to look exactly like the picture on the pattern. A gracious viewer, Betty, went to the trouble to identify each fabric in every block and then created a layout schematic for all of us to use. Thank you Betty!

On pages 3-5, the background fabrics are all identified by number. The number in the circle next to the fabric corresponds to the number of the fabric in the blocks created by Betty in the layout schematic.

I will be cutting all my fabrics and putting them in 21 stacks numerically so I can grab the one I need when I make the blocks that surround the chickens.

I also identified how to tell all the blocks apart once they are sewn. This quilt is built in columns. On the layout diagram below, each column is numbered 1-5. The numbers on the blocks correspond to the column that the block goes in and the number of the block in that column. For instance, Block 1-1 is: Column 1 1st block; 3-2 is Column 3, 2nd block; 5-9 would be 5th column and 9th block in that column, and so on.

On the upper corner of each block, I will use a Frixion marker to label the block according to the layout diagram in the column it goes in. I will write the numbers in the same spot on every block set so I know which way the block is turned.

Here’s a video where I explain all this.

Please leave a comment if I wasn’t clear and you need some assist. Happy to help!