Quilting With A Best Friend

This week, my best friend is visiting from St. Louis, MO, and she is making a quilt for her brother.  I love the optical illusion of depth in this quilt, and it is so easy to put together.   We worked together on the cutting portion, and I was her assistant on the sewing together part.  Here's a picture of Dee, at work at the sewing machine:

She doesn't like to have me take her picture, so if you know her, don't mention that her picture is here.  hee,hee

Friday, here was our start:

We cut squares 8.5 by 8.5 of focus fabric, and then cut black fabric strips, one at 2.5 by 6.5 and one 2.5 by 8.5.  We added two background squares, each 2.5 by 2.5, to the black rectangles (at 1:00 PM and 7:00 PM position on the focus fabric squares, and each completed block, with it's "shadow" is then 10.5 inches, unfinished, finishing at 10 inches.

Here is the quilt now, as we are adding a scrappy border on the outside:



Doesn't the "shadow" make the focus fabrics pop?  The sashing finishes at 4 inches.