Houston, we have a kaleidoscope....

The center of the Kaleidoscope is finished!

There are still 2 borders to be added to finish the quilt top, but the most difficult piecing is done. 

Last night, I had the four quarter pieces all sewn, but I decided to wait until this morning before attempting the sewing of all four quadrants.  The mystery of how those 12 points were going to meet in the middle would have to be solved by the light of day.

This morning, I got the first half sewn together.  I managed to make the front look pretty:

But the back side was scary.

Not scary enough to keep me from making the second half, though.  After that side was done, there was twice as many seam allowances to deal with.  I folded them back as much as possible, and held the seam allowances out of the way with a few strategically placed pins:

The directions suggest starting from the center and sewing toward the edge.  In the photo above I started sewing right at the intersection of the seams, and toward the lower edge.  It was quite a stack to fit under the pressure foot, and in fact, it did not.  You can see in the next photo that the presser foot was not making contact with the throat plate.

A little "manual sewing" with the hand wheel and I got the first few stitches sewn.  After just a couple of stitches to secure the center, the rest of the seam was business as usual:

After the first half of the last seam was done,  I pushed aside all the seam allowances in the other direction, held them with pins and sewed from the center toward the top edge.

 The suspense was killing me on that last seam.  I had to control myself from zooming along the rest of the seam just so I could finish and open it out to look.

At last, I could peek.  Here was the result:

Can you believe it?  I can't!  All along this process I have had a back-up plan to applique a hexagon over the center of the kaleidoscope to hide what I was sure would be a disasterous center.
Of course, we can't even begin to talk about what the back looks like now, but I'll show you anyway:

Before pressing with the iron, that center lump of seam allowances stood about a half inch tall!  After ironing, it flattened out a bit, but will still need some quilting to keep it looking flat.

Now I just have to decide what kind of border treatment this little baby will get.