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Despite my lack of posting, I have been sewing. (More on that in some upcoming posts.) However, I was doing some serious procrastinating on getting started on my IG Mini Swap. I think it was a bit intimidating to see everyone's amazing mosaics of design inspiration as well as the beautiful work that the early birds were already turning out (see #igminiswap on Instagram). Oh, and I'm also just a procrastinator at heart. :-)

Last month at my quilt guild meeting the speaker was Rita Hutchens. I was amazed by her "Totally Tubular Technique of strip piecing" and bought a couple of her patterns, including the one for making flying geese, so I decided to try it out. I picked out a blue and an orange blender and used the same light grey background fabric to start two sets of flying geese. I had no idea what size they were going to end up or how or if I'd use them for my swap mini quilt. Here's my first tube:

strip pieced tube of blue and grey fabric

About halfway through the process I decided on alternating blue and orange geese. When I was done (using half of my geese) I had a three foot strip of little geese. They each measure about 1 1/8" tall and 2 1/4" wide finished.

alternating orange and blue flying geese strip

yellow, grey, lime and sea green sample fabrics to potentially pair with orange and blue geese
some of the fabrics I chose from

Okay, now what? I knew I needed to add some more fabrics and decided I would use the geese as a first border around a center block, so I went to work choosing a 9" finished center block.

9 inch green and blue start block in progress

Here's where I'm at now. I'll add one or two more borders to bring it to between 18" and 24" square finished.

mini medallion quilt in lime, blue, orange and grey with first border on

My ALYoF November goal is to finish piecing the quilt top, which will leave me a week to quilt it before mailing. I'm really enjoying a bunch of firsts: first swap, first flying geese, first tube piecing, first medallion style quilt.

Thanks for visiting!

Linking up to ALYoF November Goal Party and WIP Wednesday.

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This fun, colorful quilt was pieced by another guild member and I picked it up... a while back... to do the quilting. I started on it over 2 1/2 years ago when I was first starting to free motion quilt. I had found Leah Day and was determined to learn how to free motion. I use a Viking 6690 with a 7" throat, and I was a bit intimidated by free motion quilting. With a little bit of help from Gordon at Viking Sewing Center and Leah's great videos, I was off and running. I decided that this philanthropy quilt was a great way to practice. I decided to quilt every other square in a checkerboard pattern, and to use a different quilting design in each of them. I did about 1/2 of the project, then I was hot to do some free motion quilting on some of my own projects. Then I started more other projects. And this quilt sat on the back burner. I decided it was high time to get this one into the finish category, so I made it my October ALYoF Goal. Once again I have ALYoF to thank for getting a project DONE!

The month started with my first 10K, followed by a foot injury that plagued me until right before our trip to Disneyland. I did manage to sew The Girl a new dress for our trip. The kids and I were all sick on vacation and I spent most of this week in the recliner and watching movies as I battled this virus. So I finally got started on finishing up the quilt yesterday or the day before. I had a dozen 6" squares to quilt, plus making and attaching the binding. Oh, and I still had to finish The Boy's Halloween costume. Well, this afternoon about 10 minutes before going out to trick or treat with the kiddos I finished putting the binding on the quilt. Phew! Here are some of my favorite patterns.

Railroad Tracks: Leah Day's design #354. I loved this one that I did way back when I was a beginner because it was easy to do, but I thought it looked flashy.
Pine Needles: Leah Day's design #24. Oops, I did my pine needles all going the same way. Travel stitching was a little tough.
Pipe Maze: Leah Day's design #249. Mine has more rounded corners than her version, but I was so happy with this block yesterday. No puckers or anything (I think)!
Basic Spiral: Leah Day's design #5. I could certainly stand to get better at spirals, but I like this one and can see using it for a filler... I like that it was easy to fill in around the dinosaur.
Gentle Flames: Leah Day's design #3. I like that this was so easy and it's pretty forgiving if you aren't perfect, but it still looks flashy.
Zen Breaks: Leah Day's design #369. It was great to use around a feature, but could also be used to create sections to use different fillers in.
Etch n' Sketch: Leah Day's design #2 (I used a bunch of her first patterns on this project!). My right edge is kinda wackadoo since I didn't go all the way to the edge, which I guess I should have. Perhaps this crazy plaid distracts you from that fact. :-)
Layered Flower: Leah Day's design #226. This block gives me the confidence to do more designs where I'm stitching over my quilting lines multiple times. My flower is a little different from Leah's since I didn't go all the way to the edge of the block with my largest layer.

I need to free motion quilt more regularly. It would really help me to get back to the Building Blocks Quilt Along for regular practice. It's nice to see how far I've come and I continue to be amazed at how I can see progress on my skills across a project or even a single block!

A couple free motion quilting questions for you quilters out there: What kind of thread do you prefer for free motion quilting? If you piece and quilt with Aurifil, do you use the same weight thread for both?

Linking up to A Lovely Year of Finishes October Finishes Party, Fabric Frenzy Friday, Finish it Up Friday and TGIFF. Yay finished quilt!

Also linking up to Finish Along 2014 Wrap Up Party. Here's my full list of Q4 goals.

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At the beginning of the month I placed an order at Pink Chalk Fabrics during their (still ongoing) fabric liquidation sale and filled in some of the color gaps in my stash of blenders. I've decided I really like blenders. A lot. They arrived this week and did not disappoint. I think I'll be working some of these into my IG mini swap mini quilt that I've yet to design or start. ;-) (Note: I think part of the reason that I'm trying to finish up some old WIPs is that I really want to dive into some new fabric without old project guilt.)

Eloise Renouf Shape Of Spring Full Circle in Sunshine and Midnight and Modern Quilt Studio The Color Collection Rain Chain Yellow

 

Alison Glass Sun Print Bike Path Prussian, Cori Dantini Merry Stitches Tiny Seed Red and Zen Chic Figures Points Oceans

 

dear Stella Confetti Dot in Sun, Parrot, Navy and Fire

 

Lizzy House Pearl Bracelet in Pond, Anchor and Swiss Chard

Linking up with Sunday Stash by Molli Sparkles.