Zinnia

My friend Sharon, who is always tempting our little group with ideas for quilting showed us this block last year.

It is the Zinnia block from The Sewing Loft.  They offer so many blocks on this site and if you are following them, sometimes they come up free.  

Anyways, I thought I would make up "one" block just to surprise her.   I had no intention of making more.

Then we went on our little shop hop last summer and I came across this floral fabric.

It's not something that I usually buy, but it was so bright and fun.  When I saw it, I immediately thought of the block that I had sitting at home and thought if I make a couple more, I could make a cute baby quilt.  

Well, jump ahead a year and I decided I needed to start using up some of that fabric that I bought on our shop hop.  I still loved this fabric and the idea of making a quilt with it, but here's why you need to write your ideas down.  I had bought enough of the focal fabric to put on the front and then use on the back of a "baby" quilt.  For some reason that whole idea went out of my head and I was wondering why I had so much of this fabric.  So I ended up working it out to make a quilt around 60 x 71" just to use up the focus fabric.  So I had to make a total of five of  the zinnia blocks.

I put it on the long arm last night and got it quilted with a new-to-me pantograph called "Heather".  I am happy how this turned out and just love it.  

I used white Glide thread on top and white Fil-Tec prewound bobbins.  

It will be bound in the focus fabric.

This quilt just makes me smile.