Change in Direction

OK, so I was working on my Bento Box project, then a need for another Christmas gift quilt came up. The BB project doesn't have a deadline so it will go in time out until I get the new Christmas gift finished.

 A search of my sewing room turned up a charm pack of a line called Casablanca, in nice masculine colors including amber and black. These would be perfect for Dancing Plus blocks with some of those nice new low-volume backgrounds I got at the FQ sale a couple weeks ago. Further search of my stash turned up a lot of fabrics that would work with the charm pack.

So I've been frantically making Dancing Plus blocks. So far I'm up to 108 of 143 needed; here they are all piled up.

These are the untrimmed blocks, not dancing yet. The finished quilt will be 11 blocks wide by 13-1/2 blocks high. It will be similar to this Dancing Plus I made earlier this year, which is also slated for a Christmas gift.

The blocks go together quickly and I've been chain piecing them in batches of four. A 5" charm is enough for one plus. So, 40 blocks from the charm pack, and the rest from stash so far. In that pile of 108 blocks there are at least 48 different dark prints and as many lights.

The blocks are intentionally made oversized so I can trim them down to dance to either the left or the right.

In other news, DS and grandson CJ are here. We had our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. CJ is 21 months old now, a lot more like a little boy than a baby. Grandpa brought the hobby horse up from the basement and cleaned it up. CJ loves it. He can climb on and off it himself. Grandma found an old straw cowboy had, which he also loves.

It's very hard to get good photos of CJ, he moves around so much they're always a blur or out of focus. Naturally the only one close to being in focus is this one.

Linking up with Patchwork Times and Em's Scrapbag