It will be a few weeks more before I have my quilting machine back from repair and although I am sooo tempted to start something new, I am trying to be a responsible quilter and turn my energies to finishing some things up.  

These were some snowball swap blocks from a couple of years ago, I threw them together with a border to make a baby quilt.  (Notice the remnants of hurricane Lucy on the right side of my design wall.  Love those kittens but wow can they be destructive!)

 In my attempt to be organized and ready to pump out some finished projects I have been preparing  everything needed to finish the quilt once the big machine comes home.

I hate to thread and re-thread the machine so I plan to put the black cone of Aurifil on the machine and assembly line quilt any finished tops requiring black thread.  Maybe that's the way to approach my UFOs rather than list them and beat myself up, maybe I should just go with quilting thread color, first my black period, then my tan period, etc.  I'll let you know how it works out!

 Scrappy Crossed quilt blocks almost complete.  You may notice that these blocks look like the scrappy crosses posted a little while ago, but not quite the same.  That's because I forgot I was swapping them.  I cant just sit and sew blocks together without getting all sorts of ideas of how to finish off the quilt.  So my blocks definitely had an orange and blue feel, however these that I swapped Maggie for, had an undeniable pink black vibe for me.  

I still have some hand stitching I'd like to do in the white areas with pink thread, as you can see there are a few safety pins hanging off there.  I'm just not finding any thread to stand out enough for my liking.  Perhaps floss will work better, I may try that this evening.  And you might notice the prairie points, a first time for me.  They do add some flair and interest to the quilt, no they weren't difficult, but I just don't know that I got the bang for my buck.  Lot's of pressing and burning my fingers when i could have done some quick flying geese and achieved almost the same effect. 

 Back used up some asterisks swap blocks from long ago.  I must also point out the toile is the same that I used for my prairie points and was leftover from my kitchen curtains, how's that for a win-win?

Orange Crush done!

Front. I think I might have screwed up the orientation of a couple of the blocks....but its still cute. Lots of seams between pieced front and back, it made quilting a little difficult. Back. Swapped blocks and unloved fabric.

Those dogs are such camera hogs!