Just one more

I have eight out of nine Swoon blocks finished:

These have been fun to make. The last block will be blue and green (with some pink) and is already cut out. Guess I'll get to work on that one right away. How's your day going?

Zigzag baby quilt

This past week has been busy with my parents coming to visit for a few days and the boys off school for mid-winter break (something I'd never heard of before coming to Washington.) We ate out with my parents a couple times, and went to the science museum; the 3D movie we saw was pretty good! And on Friday I ran all over town with the kids. I wanted to check out this one thrift store that turned out to be really stinky so we went to another tried-and-true thrift store in another part of town. I got the Footloose soundtrack on CD for $3 and we found some like-new jeans for kid #1 so it was a good thing we went.

My parents took some baby gifts back to Utah for my brother and sister-in-law and their sweet new baby girl. She's not even a month old; I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing her baby quilt so soon. Here it is, my first zigzag quilt:

 

I asked my sister-in-law, Laura, what she might be interested in for this baby's quilt and she said she liked purple and green and butterflies and dragonflies. I didn't have any butterfly or dragonfly fabric on hand but was able to find some good greens, purples, and a little pink to put this quilt together. For the quilting, I did stippling in the colored zigzags, and straight lines in the white. I have since learned that I can loosen my presser foot pressure *even more* than I did for this quilt and it takes away all shifting issues. I am still kind of a beginner as far as any kind of straight line quilting goes.

Oh, and if you want to make a similar quilt, I used 5.5" squares and made them into half-square-triangles with the drawing the line down the middle method. I didn't trim the squares at all. This quilt ended up slightly larger than 36" x 44".

I have big plans this week including dentist appointments, starting the search for an orthodontist, and getting my Swoon quilt top all put together. I'll share my progress on that soon, maybe tomorrow even! Hope you're having a good Sunday.

Swoon progress

I've finished blocks 3 and 4 for my swoon quilt:

I love the grunge fabric (the yellow there if you don't know what I mean) that's in all of the Basic Grey fabric lines. So pretty. They have a really good green in this line, too.


Here are the 4 blocks I've finished so far:

I like them better together than individually. I'm working on 5 and 6 today.

How's your week going? What are you working on?

Swooning

Hi friends! Hope you are having a good weekend. I have been working on some gifts that I can't share here yet, but will soon! And I've started my swoon quilt. Here are the first two blocks:

I'm using the Curio fabric line by Basic Grey, and have the fabrics picked out for the next two blocks. I want to have a smaller finished quilt (the pattern makes an 80" x 80" quilt), so I resized the blocks to 18" instead of 24".

Also, I finished up my mermaid swoon pillow yesterday:

I just finished it up with a simple envelope back, but with a double layer of fabric (unquilted) for the back pieces to make it a little sturdier. It looks really cute on my little girl's bed.

I'm hoping to get back to free motion quilting my king size quilt again this week. My wrist has been sore and I've been kind of waiting, hoping for it to feel better. I don't want to aggravate it with too much quilting.

FFMQ Winners!

Thanks to everyone who participated in Focus on Free Motion Quilting last month!  I really appreciate my 4 guest bloggers and the sponsors, along with those of you who read along and commented. I was excited to see the completed projects posted in the link-up and had my son put some numbered papers in a bowl to draw the winners. And here they are:

Prize #1, 4 Cones of Essential Pro Thread in Natural from Connected Threads goes to #6, Storied Yarns

Prize #2, Hawthorne Threads $50 Gift Certificate goes to #3, Pat in Oregon

Prize #3, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #5, Beth

Prize #4, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #1, Richard of Richard Quilts

Prize #5, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #7, Sonia

I will be emailing all winners immediately after publishing this post to get your contact info for the sponsors. Thanks again and keep quilting!