Slow Progress vs. Instant Grat

This weekend I thought about all the projects I should be starting on, like my For the Love of Solids swap items or my play mat and town... Then I continued working on some slow cookers instead. I now have 19 Japanese + & x blocks done, plus a few more cut out. You can see all of them here. And now that the secret is out, I can tell you about the whole reason I became addicted to these and started this scrappy quilt. The first two I tried were for a sneaky collaborative quilt for Rachel, made by a bunch of us in the do. Good Stitches charity bee. What's funny is that she saw my first post about these blocks back in December and she loved them and was inspired to start the scrap-attack quilt along going on over on her blog. My first thought was that I had potentially ruined our secret gift quilt idea, because if you follow Rachel, you know she moves FAST. I was positive she would just whip up her own + & x before we could get ours together. Luckily, she went with her awesome scrappy triangle design instead, and of course she loved the gift quilt. And I guess it would not be horrible to have two + & x quilts? Anyway, I just thought it was really funny that her inspiration for the Scrap Attack was actually inspired by her. So meta...

I also completed a second Swoon last week! It's a little daunting that I still have 7 of these to make. (and they certainly take me more than 2 hours, more like 4!) But man, each one you finish is really satisfying in itself. 

And I just love the middle square on this one. So fun.

 As much as I love chipping away at my big quilty projects, today I needed to make something super quick. Something that I could see put to use immediately. So I grabbed a couple scraps and made headbands for our friend Lily who was over to play. There, my sewing put to good use right away. That's better!

Also, this one decided to take her first couple steps this weekend! I love that little baldy face!