What's going on these days

I've started on the piecing for the Trip to Ireland barter quilt (I'm piecing a top for a quilting buddy; she's hand-quilting a quilt for me).  This project is a combination of an Irish Chain block and a Trip Around the World block.

This is the Irish Chain block.  I need to make a messload of them.  All of the strip sets have been sewn and I'm in the process of sub-cutting slices to make the Irish Chain blocks. 

I could be extremely efficient and sub-cut ALL the strips and bundle them together so that all I would have do to is sew-sew-sew.  However, I've chosen to take cautious approach .. seeing as this is not my fabric, what I have is what I have and additional fabric is not available ... and I am sub-cutting the slices as I need them.

You know what is really, *really*, REALLY annoying?   Running out of bobbin thread when matching up intersections on the 10 segment Irish Chain. Harumph.  If you must know, I was at the second segment but didn't realize it until the very end of the strip.


Since there is no hard deadline for the Trip to Ireland quilt AND I have a high-priority baby quilt to make, construction of the Trip to Ireland blocks has been temporarily suspended until the end of the week.

One of Mr. Pirate's nieces is expecting and a baby shower is this coming weekend.  I had a baby quilt pattern all picked out.  I was about to pull the fabrics for it when I came across the cutest name in one of the quilting blogs I read.  Yep .. the name of the fabric line caught my fancy so I tracked it down.

The line is "Oink-a-Doodle-Moo".  Now honestly, how could you possibly resist such a name?  Even better than having a complete fabric line to choose from, there is also a panel print of 6 barnyard blocks.   Now, as much as I disdain "cheater" quilts, this one is too cute to pass up!  Using the quilt shown in Lovin' Life at the End of the Dirt Road blog post as an inspiration on use of the panel print, I am alternating 4-patch of pinwheels and the panel blocks.

I'm undecided on whether or not to use her border.  It's really, really cute but might be a tad more involved than I have time for.  After all, not only do I need to construct the top but get it quilted and bound by *this weekend* ... 6 days away.  I'll be thinking about what kind of border to put on it whilst I make all those pinwheel blocks.

As you can see from this in-progress picture, I still have a few pinwheels to make.  The black isn't part of the quilt; that's a sheet I'm using as a design wall.