One Fish, Two Fish, 120+ Fish

I got a text on Friday morning from my friend Linda with news that her first grandchild had arrived! The baby's sex was only revealed at birth, so I did not make a baby quilt ahead of time. The baby is a boy and of course I have no boy quilts currently ready. I asked her if she had a theme in mind and she said fish or deer...A quick trip onto Pinterest helped me locate this snowball fish tutorial.

I love a scrappy quilt, so I think this is fabulous. I thought about using a medium gray I had in my stash for the background, but my hubby thought is was a little too dark. Off to the fabric store I went and bought a light gray solid. I spent the rest of the day Friday cutting out fish fabrics and squares for the corners. There are 120 fish in the quilt which means there are 720 corner squares and there were 720 corner squares to mark. I made some extra fish and now it is time to play with their layout. You can find the tutorial to make snowball fish here:

http://theobjectsofdesign.blogspot.com/2015/11/snowball-fish-tutorial.html

Earlier in the week, I had been working on these stars with my Kona leftovers from my Postcard from Sweden Quilt. I have all of my half square triangles sewn into the patches and I am ready to assemble all of the blocks, but those can wait until the fish top is done. Here is the tutorial for this quilt:

https://www.aquiltingsheep.com/2014/01/wake-up-to-kona-solids.html

 Since it was my spring break, I signed up for a walking foot machine quilting class on Monday and Tuesday. I have not taken a quilting class in years and have never taken one at Hi Fashion Sewing Machines in Grand Junction. Here is their website, if you are interested:

http://www.hifashiongj.com

It is an hour plus drive each way, but it was worth it! We sewed 16+ samples to try a variety of techniques.

Our teacher, Angie, was an excellent instructor and the hostess with the mostest! There were 8 of us, and she was very attentive. The book we used WALK: Master Machine Quilting with Your asking Foot by Jacquie Gering is excellent and has many other designs I look forward to trying. You can get it from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/WALK-Master-Machine-Quilting-Walking/dp/1940655218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523213543&sr=8-1&keywords=walking+foot+jacquie+gering

My machine was long overdue for a tune up because we have been without a Pfaff repair for a couple of years. It was acting up a bit, so I left it there for a tune up and it won't be done for at least 10-12 days. In the mean time, I sewed the fish and star blocks on my Singer Featherweight. I am hoping my machine will be ready for pick up by Friday, so I can use my wavy stitch to machine quilt the fish quilt!

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