WIP Wednesday: Crafternoon Tea Edition

Okay, we didn't actually drink tea, but I spent a wonderful afternoon with one of my favorite people, the lovely Sara of Sweet & Crunchy. Sara has a real, honest to goodness craft room (so jealous!) and has given me an open invitation to craft it up with her anytime. So today I loaded my sewing machine, a bag of fabric and a quinoa salad for lunch into a Zipcar, left Levi with the babysitter and headed on over. 

Sara whipped up an adorable kippah for her son. And she did it without a pattern! With a sleeping baby attached to her! She rocks!

I worked on the special secret project that I mentioned yesterday, which isn't actually a secret. I don't know why I said it was. I suck at secrets. Also, I want to share pictures but it's not done yet and I don't want to wait. So. I am making a mini quilt in honour of Hannukah! I realize this is totally hypocritical of me, having recently complained about Christmas Crafts taking over all my favourite blogs. I have no excuse or explanation other than to say that I came across a Hannukiah quilt block online and immediately thought how great it would look with a few modifications. I decided to use white as my background fabric and instead of doing scrappy candles, I would do them in rainbow colours, and only the shamash would be scrappy. After auditioning a number of prints, I decided on the fabrics below.

Unfortunately, I'd decided on seven colours instead of eight. Silly me! I added a red strip which was really for the best, because a rainbow needs red.  I spent last night cutting out all the pieces so that when I arrived at Sara's I was all set to sew, sew, sew.

I was able to chain piece the flames. I love chain piecing! It makes me feel so efficient.  Here is the finished block:

Obviously, the mini quilt is not yet completed. I am going to use the green fabric as the backing and I'm still on the fence about which fabric to use as binding. I'm leaning towards the pink one. Any suggestions?

I am planning to try free motion quilting on this project. I've never done this before so I watched several youtube video tutorials this afternoon and this evening I started practicing. 

Free motion quilting is not easy. I want to do a simple meandering pattern. I'm not sure how long I need to practice before I'll feel ready to tackle this mini quilt. I'll probably just try another few swatches and then go for it. I'm wild and crazy like that.

WIP status report
Wonky Log Cabin Placemats - one block to go
Levi's Growth Chart - still need to embroider his height, but otherwise complete
Levi's Bed Quilt - on hold until I settle on a pattern
Farmer's Wife QAL - book has been ordered
Add-a-Border Swap - one block is done, plan to finish one more before sending out

So, what have you been working on?

PS - I'm too tired to edit, please excuse typos, missed words, etc. thx!