Plaid baby quilt/play floor mat

Look what I found in the closet...the first quilt I ever machine quilted-complete except for needing a binding. I guess I never bothered to finish it because I thought it wasn't very good...but now looking at it-I really like it. The back shows that I was solving tension problems while working on it !!:) I was able to find a piece of red plaid fabric just big enough for the binding and now its finished...the perfect size for a baby quilt/floor play mat!

The blocks are all made up of leftover bits and pieces from different plaid quilts I made over the years- the two snail trail blocks are from a quilt I made in the early 90s.
Most of the quilting is straight line walking foot or free motion meandering but I really like what I did in some corner triangles-I "let myself go"-something I really need to do more of. I especially like this little squiggle I got coming off the concentric circles...
and this leaf.
I'm linking to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry and Sew and Tell at Amylouwho. Hop on over there and see all the terrific finishes for this week.

9 patch progress and a little tip

I've made some progress on the UFO 9-patch quilt....the center is all sewn together and ready for borders.I really like how the quarter square triangles give an on-point look.

Here's the top laid out on the bed (I always take a picture so I'll know the order I've decided on) and here's a little tip for anyone else who lays their tops out on the bed.
When I've sewn the blocks into rows and then lain out the rows to sew the top together, I pin the seam allowance to the "correct" side for each row...for me that's odd numbered rows to the left and even numbered rows to the right.
This way when I lift the rows (to take them downstairs) to iron them, I don't have to worry about whether or not I'll mess up the order-I know the direction to press each row by the pins.

I'm off now to quilt on DS's quilt!

UFO 9-patch blocks are finally becoming a quilt

I've had these blocks in the closet for quite a while. A few years ago, I made a 9-patch quilt for someone and had leftover strip sets so I made these 12 blocks.

I had set the original quilt on point with a plain square of this fabric alternating with the 9 patch blocks.

I really loved it and would have been happy to dublicate it for myself but I have only a quarter yard of this paisley left....that's why the blocks have been in the closet for years. I just couldn't get that quilt out of my head and I couldn't think of anything else to do with the blocks...anything I would really like that would have some of the same voluptuousness as the first quilt. (Can you call a quilt voluptuous?)

These are the rest of the fabrics leftover from the first quilt, I took them out of the closet and ..hmm, I suddenly knew what I wanted to do.

I'm going to use this quarter square triangle block as the alternating block.

I have to make 3 more 9 patch blocks and I've made the quarter square triangles blocks already. I think this is going to look good! Simple but good!