The insane hexagon quilt

To help with understanding of what I'm talking about with the hexagon quilt here is the background story:

Some years ago in a bout of total insanity I decided I wanted to make a huge king sized hexagon quilt for my bed - insane as I'm doing this all by hand and wanted to have as many fabrics in this as was physically possible. So I went to my usual quilting communities and asked for help - which resulted in many envelopes arriving with 2 1/2 inch squares and larger scraps from all over the world.

Since some fabrics were washed and others not I decided to just wash them all and so make sure that they had all been pre-shrunk before use (and that also washed out some fabric softener/starches some people had used which were setting off my allergies) This was pretty time consuming as the squares are too small for the dryer and if dried in a net they came out creased so I ended up having to press a couple of thousand squares/scraps of fabric. then came the process of making sure that they were indeed large enough and if required trimming down to a 2 1/2 inch square, sorting to colour and bagging it all up. This was a pretty boring process so a couple of times it just got put aside for more fun things. This summer (2010) I finally finished washing & pressing the fabrics and could get cutting and sewing 

Cutting of the whites and browns started in the first week of September 2010 with me basting as I cut then playing with the layout till I was happy with the result

The plan: make a king sized quilt
The Units: hexagons basted around a paper form (known as paper piece patchwork or English paper piecing)
The blocks: 91 units of a similar shade hand sewn together
Size Units: 1 inch sides
Size blocks: 14 1/2 inch sides | 19 inches corner to corner | 16 inches side to side
Required blocks: 56 as whole, half and corner blocks
Border: a gazillion 1/2 " hexagons and 1/2 " 60 degree diamonds.
Required units: approx 5096 <gulp>
Insanity level for this project: Off the scale
Expected time line: 5 years (leaving time for a life, kids and other projects )

 At the time of writing I'm basting the units for block #23 - sea green.
To see all the quilt blocks together look here:  Insane Hexagon Project