Marching in the Parade!

I was excited to see that this month's "assignment" was a choice of any Thimble Blossoms mini pattern.  I have a few of Camille's adorable mini patterns in my collection, but it didn't take me long to decide on MINI Swoon, and on the fabrics.  I've been collecting fuchsia, pink, orange and yellow - citrus colors - and low volume/text prints.  How would these look together for a scrappy MINI Swoon?

I showed my friend Chelsey after making 2 blocks.  She told me I should make a whole quilt with 8" blocks!  Well, I'm not that ambitious, but it did give me the idea of making a Swoon quilt with my collection of citrus colors and 3 different sizes of Swoon blocks.  This quilt is still swimming around in my head.  But for now, here are my Baby/MINI Swoon blocks (8").  Soon to be joined by Big Sister (16") and Mama (24") Swoon blocks.

No, it's not sewn together because the blocks are going to get mixed around when I decide on my layout, but I hope it's ok to enter the parade anyway, Sinta and Sherri!  I can't wait to see what everyone else makes for April, and to find out what's ahead for May!

Garden Medallion

I saw this beautiful quilt on my longarm quilter's blog after she quilted it for another customer.  She mentioned a kit available at a local shop.  I may have left work early that day so I could race right over and buy one, but - to my disappointment - they didn't have any kits.  They did have the pattern, Garden Medallion by Bloomin' Workshop, so I bought one and started planning my quilt.  I have quite a bit of Kaffe Fassett fabric stashed, so I started playing.  I decided I wanted to make mine larger than the pattern, and included another pieced border.

I love the large, colorful Kaffe prints, but they can be hard to work with.  Sometimes the big prints have colors that you don't want in your quilt.  Sometimes I changed the fabric in one border, then had to change all subsequent borders to get the look I wanted.

I made hourglass blocks for the fourth border instead of the pinwheels shown on the pattern.  I also added a pieced star in the upper left and lower right corners of the quilt.  My quilt is 70x70.  The pattern without one added border is 63x63.