The Begining

Here's the squares (all 180 8 1/2" squares!):

I cut them 8 at a time with my rotary cutter and the special square ruler you can see on the star cloth.  I highly recommend getting a rotary cutter if you are going to do any patchwork quilting.  I'd still be cutting away if I didn't have mine.

And I was able to get a little ahead and sewed one of the nine patches together!  I'll explain in more detail about these tomorrow.