Monday, January 30, 2012

still swooning...

How about a little Swoon action to brighten this Monday!  I again spent some time this weekend working on a few swoon blocks, and I am really loving how this quilt is taking shape.  I'm getting antsy to work on nothing but this quilt for the next few days to see how it is going to come together!

Swoon Blocks 1-6

I now have 6 of the 9 blocks completed, and I could not be happier with how well the colors are playing together.  Its just so fun and bright.  I'm tossing around the idea of widening  the borders slightly to make this queen size to keep on one of the beds in one of our spare rooms.  

Swoon Block #5

Swoon Block #6

Now that I have the hang of how these go together, they seem to be taking about 2ish hours to piece plus cutting time.  I find it almost calming, me and my Adele Pandora station rock out while chain piecing those HSTs and geese, and then bust out the pins to line up all those points. 

Speaking of piecing those geese, what  do you doing with all those extra triangles that are left over from piecing your geese (piecing the traditional way)?  I thought for a minute about figuring out the dimensions for the no waste flying geese method, but at the time, I was just plain too lazy to do so, haha.  I was content to let those extra little triangles find a new home in my scrap bin, but I came across emedoodle's idea for almost instant HSTs and thought I'd share!

easy peasy HSTs from flying geese excess

Such a simple idea here!  She suggested just drawing a second line 1/2" away from your line you draw from corner to corner and then stitching on both lines, so when you cut your excess away from your geese, you have instant "pre-sewed" HSTs!   I have a nice stack of HSTs waiting to be made into perhaps some coordinating pillows for my soon to be swoon quilt.  

Hope this was helpful, happy Monday!

18 comments:

  1. Whoa, these are gorgeous! You are making me wanna Swoon-along, although I've already resisted this long. I don't think it's going to last much longer! Lovely blocks :)

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  2. Just love all the colours. I especially love the way those orange leaves flow on this week's first block

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  3. Your Swoon blocks are the best I have seen! Fabulous colour choice!

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  4. I love how bright and cheery your blocks look! I used all the leftover HSTs from my Swoon blocks. Didn't occur to me at first, but once I realized I could use those bits, I did exactly what you describe...sewing the extra seam at the same time as making the flying geese. It worked awesome and I got some great cushions out of it!!

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  5. I am swooning over your Swoon blocks, they are fab, so bright and cheery and they work great together. This is going to be gorgeous!

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  6. Oh yes! Those swoon blocks look so great. They are going to make a beautiful quilt!

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  7. Love your swoon blocks - the colours are so fun! Can't wait to see the end product :)

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  8. Gorgeous, gorgeous blocks, Jess! I especially love the new orange one. And great idea for the HSTs - thanks for sharing!

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  9. Though I am just a beginner - your swoon blocks have inspired me to attempt my own swoon blocks. I downloaded the pattern yesterday. Yours is so bright and cheery - a lovely look for swooning :-) Great work! (and awesome tip about the half-square-triangle / flying geese)

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  10. I love your Swoon blocks, they are really coordinating so well together.

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  11. Love your choice of colours, Jess. They look spectacular.

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  12. Those blocks certainly are gorgeous!

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  13. Great idea for the instant HST's - thanks for sharing!

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  14. I was making my first flying geese the other day and thought it was a lot of waste too! But this is a brilliant idea, thanks!

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