Back on the chain gang

I've returned from a very relaxing holiday by the sea, where I did get the binding on one quilt finished!  The second quilt which I'd hoped to get quilted to take away to bind didn't quite get finished - actually it's quite a way off finished :)   And I'm back on the chain gang - chain piecing that is!  

The squaring up is always what drives me nuts though!  I have to square up as I must admit that my attention wanders when I chain piece and it is the only way I can have a reasonable chance of matching up points nicely. Today I spent two hours pressing and squaring up.  Tonight I've realised that I will be short a few units, so I'll have to cut and piece another 15 or so units.  These units are for the larger quilt that my daughter has requested, I'm hoping to make it three blocks across and three down - each block is 18" finished so this will make it a reasonable size, and I'll probably add a five or six inch border around the outside.  I've been really loving square quilts and hope it will look good once it's made up.  

My daughter chose this quilt pattern from a smaller quilt that I have hanging on the wall in our lounge room.  Unfortunately I don't know the name of the traditional pattern - any ideas?  It's easy enough, all half square triangles so quick to chain piece all the units.

 

I don't usually do scrappy quilts - I adore them when others make them, but I am always nervous of ending up with something that looks like it fell out of the rag bag.  I've restricted the pallet here to purple, pink, and orange, which were requested by my daughter, and I added in some aqua and a small amount of chocolate brown.  I do get very nervous about moving away from my usually quite restricted colour and fabric choices.

I have another week of holidays which I'm taking at home (a sewcation!) so hope to get a few other projects moving along too. I want to make up at least one block of my Swoon quilt, the Swoon Along is looking so good on flickr, some of those quilts are fabulous!  I'm pleased to say that my good patchwork friend Pam is Swooning Along with me.  And of course I've got quite a few WIPs that I should have a look at!