The #Swoon-a-long

Remember that quilting army I have been trying to recruit and arm?  Its really coming together nicely.  Like, so nicely that at some point during the late spring, my quilty friend L (if it wasn't her, I'm just going to blame her because everyone will believe me) came up with the idea that we should all do a quilt-a-long together.  All of us had been eyeing Camille Roskelley's Swoon pattern and had it on our quilting bucket lists.  The block is big, it uses HSTs and Flying Geese units so everyone could make it, and its fat-quarter friendly so we decided our collective summer project would be the #swoonaloing.

I had gone shopping earlier in June for the fabrics I was going to use (pretty sure I have previously posted them) and so after my epic road trip out west I had to come home and put my nose to the grindstone to catch up with my friends.   The blocks are 24 inches square and a full quilt uses 9 blocks.  This is an epic undertaking but by the time I had my first block done, I knew I was ALL IN!

My first block - these fabrics are Waterfront Park by Violet Craft and I LOVE the colour combo!

I was only mildy interrupted by a mid-July work trip and a five-day sleepover party with my niece during which movies were watched, pictures were coloured and Disney Stores were attended.  Massive digression here - Look what she made!!!!!!!!

This is her first sewing project!  She made her very own pencil case.  Selected her fabrics, helped cut, practiced her straight lines and went to town!  Now her vast array of markers have their very own home.

People, I'm not gonna lie.  My quilting army is now multi-generational!  Okay, okay, back to the swoon... Before she arrived, I was able to get five blocks finished.  While she was here, I kinda decided that it would be easier to chain piece the last four of the blocks for the swoon all at once.  I took advantage of pony-colouring time to mark up and organize my fabrics so I was off to the races when she went home.

These are all the HST units for the remaining blocks.  Nothing prettier than a gigantic stack of in-progress blocks!

I think by the end of that day, I had all the blocks finished and instagrammed!

Here are all nine blocks finished - in no particular order.

I had to move all my living-room furniture out of the way so I could get enough space to lay out this monster and figure out which ones I wanted to put where.   I was pretty motivated to see what it would look like when it was finished so within a couple days I had the top finished.

Super happy with the way it turned out!

And extra bonus! I decided to save up and gather all the corner cut offs from the flying gees units to see how many I would have.  I thought I could turn them into HSTs pretty easily since they were already matched up and the same size.  I chain pieced the entire pile and ended up with 144 2.5 inch blocks.  Not too shabby!

Can I admit that I was not looking forward to pressing and trimming this ginormous stack?!?

At the end, I have this 24.5 x 24.5 inch thing of loveliness that I will turn into a wall hanging or a big, floppy cushion, or that I may keep and see what else I can add to it.  

Not gonna lie - this makes me seriously happy to look at!

Now....how to quilt the Swoon.....