WIP-ing right along

As the week creeps towards the Labor Day holiday (and therefore the end of the month), my thoughts turn to monthly bee and swap commitments.  I've worked on a few ahead of time, but there are a couple of (really) tardy items.  Yep- there will still be that mad scramble to finish a few things, but at least I can count them all on one hand this time!

I had started my Love Circle Swap item a little over a week ago, but I needed to purchase more Essex linen to keep things moving along.  My partner wanted bright colors and listed stars among her likes.  I started with the Reverse Rainbow Star tutorial from Kat of Diary of a Flutter.Kat, made a few minor adjustments (all I did was make use of hourglass blocks and omit a row and a column, really) and voila:

 

All that's left is sewing everything above into a pouch.  My unnatural fear of installing zippers has had me poring over zippered pouch tutorials the past couple of days.  Hopefully, I've armed myself with enough knowledge to tackle the zipper without making a mess of things. 

In my previous post, I set a rather lofty goal of piecing eight A-Z Quilt-Along blocks at Sew Day over the weekend.  Even with pre-cutting the fabric, I only got through four in four hours:  Irish Chain, Jack in the Box, Memory and Louisiana. 

I skipped right over "K"- hadn't even picked a block, so now a little backtracking is required.  In fact, that's my strategy for being current for the next guild meeting.  I'll piece the "W" and "X" blocks and go backwards from there. 

Finally, I pieced blocks #3 and 4 for the Vintage Holiday Quilt-Along.  These blocks are pleasantly easy to make.   

Now that Pure Elements in Mystic Grey is finally in my hands, Martina's Poetica quilt will be added back into the ever-growing WIP rotation.  There may even be a progress report on it next Wednesday!

Linking up to W.I.P Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.