Polka Dots - Lots and Lots of Dots!

I like polka dots, always have. And the Ta Dot line decided it wanted to be one of my quilts. On Sunday, I went down to Becky's house (@SarcasticQuilter on Instagram) to finally meet her and quilt together. We've been Instagram friends since I lived in Boston, but in the year since I've lived here we've managed to miss each other at DC Modern events going to opposite meetings and other little timing snafus. She also had Karie in town (@Karietkq on Instagram). I cut all my fabric and started sewing down there, and now am about 1/2 of the way through piecing.

The fabrics which just called to be put together. That bigger gray dot in the background is a 108" wide backing fabric. But I think I'll actually use it for a different project. 

Here it is so far on my design wall. The only placement considerations are that the same color blocks don't end up directly next to or on top of one and other. I'm constructing them in groups of 3 squares with three rectangles. Just makes them easier to work with. Looking forward to piecing the remaining blocks over the rest of this week. 

Irish Chain

The Irish Chain quilt is now quilted and just waiting for its binding. It is backed with minky - surprise, surprise - and quilted with serpentine lines. It's the first time I've done line quilting on anything bigger than a placemat, and it's definitely a little boring, but I do like how it looks. I chose that because it seemed like a nice echo of the streamer pattern. In each 3" square I did two lines of quilting which means the lines are all approximately 1.5" apart, but nothing was measured exactly. I'm planning to bind this with the black streamers which are the corner blocks, and which I chose not to use in the body of the quilt.

The other new thing with this quilt is that I'm now a Pinmoor convert. They are little silicon nubs that slide over the end of regular pins. Regular pins slide through fabric better than safety pins and these are about 1000x nicer to your fingers while placing them and for removal. I was able to pin the entire top in just over half an hour. For reference it's 55" square, and I used 100 pinmoors approximately every 6". I didn't have any spray baste and I could do this on my dining room table, which I would never do with spray baste anyway. 

 Detail shot of the quilting:

 The fully quilted top over the the back of my couch. I didn't have to remove all the pins during the quilting process if they weren't in the path of the lines, so those are the ones you see there.

 My favorite backing of minky, and this one has batting, so it's warm.

 Another detail shot of the quilting in natural sunlight.