Feeling all Giddy

Well first I'll update you on Flowerburst. I added in the purple and turquoise border. Then I sandwiched, quilted it and added the binding.

 If I want it to count towards the 12WIPs in 2012 competition I have to wait until February to complete the quilt (as I have already completed my January WIP). So I am going to put it aside for 2 weeks before I do the hand stiching. Sneaky!

Now anyone that is quilty or reads quilty blogs is either participating in the Swoon-a-long or reading about it on everyone else's blogs. I am not immune. I think its a lovely quilt and am thinking about making a Queen size version for my bed. I shouldn't really be taking on a huge new project when I have 12+ WIPs to finish, but I think I can sneak in a small swoon quilt. A friend has a baby earlier in the week, so I thought I might make one Swoon block and turn it into a small baby quilt. If I use some of my Denise Schmidt fabric then I am working towards another of my 2012 WIP' goals too.

 I didn't really feel the need to purchase the pattern as it was quite easy to see how each block was built. The original Swoon block has flying geese blocks, some rectangles and larger square pieces in it, but I decided to create my Swoon block (shall we call it Giddy? or is that being too cheeky??) from equally sized square units. This way, the entire block can be built from half-triangle-squares (HTS) units and plain units.

 Here is a break down of the units that need to be created. I decided to build the block using 3.5" units (3" finished) and the overall block is 24.5" (24" finished). Obviously you could decide to scale down the final block size, reducing the size of the units accordingly.

 The HSTs are created in multiples of 4 using this neat technique I read on the Internet...somewhere...sometime.

 To create four 3.5" HTSs cut a 6" blocks from each of your two fabrics. Place the fabrics right side together and stitch AROUND the outside of the squares using a 1/4" seam (This is very counter intuitive as you essentially stitch your squares shut with no opening).

 Cut your squares into triangles buy slicing diagonally from corner to corner.

 Open out the triangles to reveal your 4 HTS's

 Press and trim down to 3.5". By cutting the original squares at 6" you have a generous amount of trimming to do. If you don't have heaps of fabric to play with you can reduce the original square to 5.5" but any smaller and you wont be able to trim out a 3.5" HTS. There is probably a formula to work out what size to cut the original squares, but I just played around with scraps until I worked out that the 6" square would yield 4 x 3.5" HTS units.

 Once I had cut and stitched and trimmed all my block units I used my graph to start building my 'Giddy' Block.

 Here it is all laid out ready to stitch the units together. The final block will be 24.5"- which is the same size as the Swoon block.

I've run out of puff for today, but once the giddy/swoon block is all sewn up I will add some borders and then quilt it as a small baby quilt.