A start (at last) on Chasing Chevrons

I finally took a couple hours tonight to make a couple of blocks for the Chasing Chevrons quilt-along, in which I am terribly behind but still very excited! I am glad I made a few to try out my method, as I'd picked out the wrong size of half-square triangle stencil. The stencils refer to the finished size, and I kept confusing myself about that, as I need 4" squares to see together to end up with a 7.5" unit. When I used the ones that said 4" finished HSTs, I ended up with 4.5" squares, which meant I did a little trimming. I'll try tomorrow with the 3.5" finished stencil, and I should be all set, though I may still make the larger ones for the strips I already cut, since it is nice to have room to trim them, so that they end up a perfect 7.5" square. That said, the stencils were surprisingly accurate, so I'm not too worried about them. I used a marking pen tonight, but I'm anxious to see if the pounce pad works, since that would make marking go even faster! I'll take some pictures of what I'm talking about later this week, since I'm pretty excited about this concept...making gridded HSTs using a stencil! I'm planning to time myself to see how long it takes to make this quilt at a leisurely pace...2 hours tonight for 2 of the 60 blocks, but I was puttering a bit.

Also, thanks for the birthday salutations! It was lovely! Bryan took me to a wonderful restaurant on my birthday for a romantic dinner for 2, and then Friday we celebrated with 3 great friends at the restaurant where we went last year for my birthday/our engagement, and our meal was exquisite! We spent the weekend cooking Cajun...crawfish bisque Saturday night and crawfish pie tonight! I made some chili this morning for a frozen food baby shower brunch today, but I was sad when I realized people had brought cute baby things, in addition to the frozen entree we were asked to bring. I could have made a cute blanket or burp cloths, and i was dying over the little outfits, but then again, I have enough projects on my list right now, so maybe it is good that I didn't realize I should have done more. Ah well! Not enough hours in the day, and I'm determined to get rolling on things for our future little one!