UFO - Bonnie Hunter's Leaders and Enders 2017 Challenge

Last night at my quilt guild meeting a UFO challenge was initiated.  You sign up to finish a specific UFO (unfinished object) by the June meeting with a monetary penalty if you fail to finish it.  Any money collected will go towards programs.  I will sign up for something, but I haven't decided what yet.  However, it did spur me on to work on a UFO today.   I started this in the summer of 2017 and last worked on it in February.  Bonnie Hunter does a Leader and Ender Challenge every year and I decided to join.  This one was originally called Rail Fence but morphed into Checkerboard Rails.  I needed 29 more strips of black and white checkers 2 wide by 6 long.  I started by making black and white strip sets and then cutting them into matched pairs arranged on design boards to take to the sewing machine to turn into four patches.  You can see a finished block in the bottom left hand corner.

Before lunch I had already made a pile of the 87 required four patches.

A short time later I had 28 strips made, 14 starting with a black square in the upper left and 14 starting with a white square in the upper left.  I left the last strip unsewn as I didn't know which type of strip I would need.  I finished off a spool of thread half way through the last checker.

I had the coloured strips already sewn in groups of four so just had to add the black and white checker boards to them.  Here are my 29 finished blocks.  It makes you dizzy looking at these blocks as they are so busy which is why I don't really like them.

I've put all 80 blocks on the design wall.  I have to move a few around that have the same fabric touching.  I guess I really only needed 28 more blocks not 29, as I have one left over.....oh well.

Now all I have to do is sew the blocks together and I will have another donation top.  All of the coloured fabric strips came from leftover fabric scraps.  Some of the white checkers came from scraps but most of the white and black I had to cut from my stash.  I was really surprised at how quickly these 29 blocks came together today!