A quick baby quilt

We've been attending our new church here for several months since getting settled in our home, and we've all been awaiting the arrival of a new little one, the fourth child of one of the worship leaders.  Well, her newborn son has now arrived, and of course a shower is planned.  What have I been doing these past four months, not thinking baby quilts for sure.  But Monday I pulled out the bin of baby fabrics and making do with what there is in the stash, pieced some flying geese, added a panel and some strips and this quick little top is the result.  Good colors for a little boy to drag along the floor or outside, or run his little trucks over.  

Pin basting on Tuesday.  I love these little characters dancing across the flying geese blocks.  Had only a small piece of this fabric.

Quilting began yesterday and I hope to have the quilting completed today.  Using Aurifil 50 wt. color 2205 and Hobbs Polydown batting.  Quilting is Wendy Sheppard's "Jester's Hat" overall design, a favorite of mine to quilt on these small projects.

Have been progressing slowly on both the Campfire Memories and Blockade quilts, they are both about half quilted at this point, but I'll wait til the finish to show more photos.
A late-spring snow blankets the ground this morning, the weather has been wild this week.  Seventy degrees on Monday, then a huge thunderstorm that turned our little creek into a raging river within half an hour!  That was quite impressive!  The creek has returned to its banks again though is still flowing high and fast.  Looking forward to finding some brook trout out there one of these days.

The Blockade Quilt

I love walking into my little sewing room and seeing a quilt in progress on the hoop stand, so right after finishing the pin basting of Campfire Memories for machine quilting (see my last post) I layered this queen size gem. This is a vintage top acquired from an online seller a couple years back.  It came from the estate of an Ohio Mennonite woman who was a prolific quilter in her day.  The seller called the pattern "The Blockade."

Several of the blocks were lightly penciled with the intended quilting design, and the white border was completely marked for quilting.

Fabrics making up the blocks are primarily mid-century prints, mostly floral with a few polka dots, stripes and geometrics thrown in.  I'm reminded of some of my mom's dresses and dad's pajamas when I look at these prints.

Here is the first day's quilting effort:

And progress as of this morning, after a couple weeks' work the central area is nearly half quilted:

The backing is a soft bleached muslin, in keeping with the era of the top, though the batting is a more modern Hobbs Polydown.  Thread is Coats 100% cotton 20 wt. hand quilting thread (pink spool). This will make a great summer quilt, and with luck it may be finished to go on the guest bed sometime this summer.
Summer seems a long way off, as we are still having snow showers every couple days, and there are forecasts for accumulating snow for Easter weekend.  On the bright side, there is a one-day warm up predicted for Thursday!    Hope springs eternal!