Great progress and Quilt Along

I've been hard at work on the mini-quilt, except for a brief pause on Monday night to attempt to make my fiancee a sleep mask.  It was not a success, mostly because of a misunderstanding on how he wanted the design.  For some odd reason, he thinks that having a triple layer of tightly-woven fabric completely covering his nostrils might make breathing difficult...what a concept!  (Though he did agree that having the nose piece does really prevent the light from coming in and helps it stay in place!)  As an untrainable mouth breather, it never occurred to me, but that's ok - I'll now have a back-up mask once I finish hand-stitching the bias binding, and I'll keep working on the design in hopes that I can share a little insight.  I've so far learned what not to do, and that's a good first step!

This is where I started sewing last night on the mini-quilt, and by the end of the evening, I'd finished piecing all the blocks and made my scrappy pink sashing (though I still need to iron it - I made one very long piece of pink awesomeness!).  Next step, green sashing, and then I need to think about how I want to piece it.  I'm thinking about trying to do a sort of basket-weavy design to mimic some of the ins and outs of the green and pink...can't wait to play tonight after dinner! 

This is moving fairly far from the garden fence design - I might need to give it a new name (since mini inverse basket-weavy garden fence is a bit long)!  What do you think, Cindy?  Have I strayed enough to give it a new name?  Or do you want to see the finished version before deciding?!?

My binding is already made, so after I get the top done, I just need to come up with a back (which I keep wanting to start on, but I'm waiting to see the final size of the top first, since I may decide it needs a border of the floral on the white background...won't decide until I'm there!)  That back will be the most challenging, as my fabric scraps are getting quite depleted - it will definitely be improvisational, but I'm fairly sure that I have enough - glad I made the binding first (and I saved the trimmings from the big quilt, so I may resort to piecing those little bits if I have to)!  Of course, if I have any leftover, I'm excited to try making a baby bucket hat from the Oliver + S book that was featured on a blog the other day...and the cycle continues!

And in other news, I've decided to try my first quilt-along!  Jennifer from That Girl, That Quilt is hosting a Chasing Chevrons quilt along, and it looks like fun!  I've watched so many quilt alongs, but I have so many projects on my to-do list that I've always felt guilty jumping into a new one.  Well, I've finished a lot of quilts lately, and this blog is making me feel like I can get even more accomplished (mostly because of such great encouragement - thanks for all the great comments, and a special thanks to everyone who is now publicly following me - it is nice to know that I have more readers than just my mom and a few old friends!).

I'm so excited to see how it goes, and I'll try to share any changes I make or different techniques that I prefer, as well! 

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone, and wish me luck!  I'm hoping to finish this quilt in time to enter it in the Sew Mama Sew mini quilt contest on Monday!