Garden Peony Progress {Meringue Bonus Quilt}

As you may have noticed in my previous post about the Meringue Bonus Quilt, I am working on two projects at once. For me, that’s pretty darn crazy. I love how we all operate differently in our craft rooms. I very rarely have more than one long term project (like a block of the month that runs for a year) and one current work in progress; that’s just what works best for me. But there was no way I could wait to dive in and piece the Meringue Bonus quilt. It’s been calling to me too much!

Garden Peony – Fabric Cut

I did wait to cut out all the fabric until I had the Meringue quilt top fully pieced, and I even waited to make sure I had at least a solid preliminary quilting plan for Meringue before indulging myself, though. The fabric cutting took one afternoon and went smoothly.

Garden Peony – Chain Piecing

The afternoon after getting all the fabric cut and ready, I put on a podcast and pinned all the quarter circles. Because I like to pin my curves, I didn’t have enough pins to also pin the the half circles and full circle. So, I chain pieced all the quarter circles and had time to pin the remaining curves before running out of sewing time. If you follow me on Instagram (@quiltingjetgirl) and view my stories, you may have caught that I thought I had misplaced a pin during this chain piecing. I pulled out a magnet and searched, but so far the pin hasn’t turned up. My guess is that I did something “smart” with it and I’ll discover it in some strange location in a few months or years…

After some quick progress, my next few days were busier between work (technical editing work definitely comes in waves) and life (grocery store shopping and other longer, needed adulting conversations). But earlier this week I was able to finish the chain sewing.

Garden Peony – Friendly Fabric Monster

Pressing and trimming the blocks didn’t take long, and I always appreciate seeing the happy friendly fabric monster after a satisfying block trimming session. This spicy monster (the majority of the trimmed fabric is Kona Spice) told me to start sewing the blocks together, and who was I to argue with that advice?

Garden Peony – Pieced Quilt Top

So now I am a very happy quilter who has scratched the itch to get this fun quilt top pieced together. The Garden Peony quilt top measure 40½” square, and I plan to spend the weekend thinking about it’s quilting plan before moving back to finish the Meringue quilt. What are your weekend quilting plans?