An old UFO isn't necessarily an easy completion

Recently I found a stack of Courthouse step blocks made as part of a group exchange a long time ago (atleast it was this century as far as I remember).  There were 50 blocks.  I put them up on the design wall to see how I could use them.  Straight set first but that left me with one lonely block.

So I tried an on point layout.  It used all the blocks but I realized I'd laid it out so I didn't have single blocks at the corners.  

So I tried again and worked with odd number of blocks in the rows which worked much better and still uses all 50 blocks.  Perfect.  I looked up setting triangles and found the size I needed and then put the design into EQ8 to confirm my arithmetic.  

I put a numbered pin in the first block of each diagonal row and stacked them up.  I had a piece of block fabric for the setting triangles and binding so added that to the stack and took them to Monday sewing last week.  I got all the rows assembled and brought them home to press and put up on the wall again.  All looked well although I noticed I had the black and grey block back at the end of a row.  I had moved it so it wouldn't blend into the black setting square but decided it blend too much and left it.  

On Thursday, I went to Elaine's for a Sit and sew day and put the rows back up on her wall.  In doing so, I discovered that the second half of the quilt wasn't going to line up.  I had arranged the steps so that long steps (full width of blocks) in one row butted against short steps in the next row so I spent the morning taking off the both setting triangle and one block and moving the block to the other end of the row and adding the triangles back on.  Shortly after lunch, the top was in two halves and there was just the center seam to sew together.  When I looked at it though, I had a large black triangle in two corners instead of a single block needing a small triangle.  The quilt was now square.  I thought I'd laid it out incorrectly originally and was missing a row to make a rectangle.  So I decided to make 11 more blocks to put in the centre to get a rectangle

In the middle of the night I realized that if I added one more row I'd need to take one half of the top apart and move the square back to where it had been in the morning to keep the long short rhythm going between the rows.  So on Friday I was just going to sew the centre seam together and have a square quilt

Today I realized there wasn't anything wrong with the two halves, no missing row, I'd put the rows up on Elaine's wall wrong and missed an offset.  If I'd left the rows alone on Thursday morning everything would have lined up properly because the two rows with 9 blocks were suppose to be offset not lined up.  However, in order to sew them offset, I need to take one half of the quilt apart and move the block back to where it was on Thursday morning.  I'm thinking a square quilt with a very large corner triangle may not be all bad.  The only thing that is stopping me from sewing that seam is one half (bottom left in the photo) is a bit wavy.  I need to find the source of the wave and see if some reverse sewing is required.  Depending on the answer to the source of the wave, this may end up as a rectangle yet.

  

So much for this being a quick UFO to finish up and arrange a home for.  Note to self, refer to your reference photo when you return quilts to a design wall to ensure they are actually up correctly.