Secret sewing projects & my next quilt

I've been working on a few secret sewing projects. I can't share them with you yet. But they have been fun!!

I posted this on instagram awhile ago, but I made this quilt top.

After much agonizing in the fabric store, I landed on this fabric for the backing.

So, I have the top, batting and backing & I'm sure I have something around here that will work for the binding, but I'm too scared to tackle quilting it all together. I'm considering bringing it home at Christmas and asking either my mom, her neighbor, and/or my mother-in-law for help. Or maybe I'll take a class at our local store - they have a 'finish it up' class. I've watched approximately 4 tutorials online for basting, quilting, and binding, but I just can't bring myself to give it a try. I love the top and I don't want to ruin it :) But, I want to learn how to do it myself

Dilemmas!

In the meantime, I'm dreaming of the next quilt I work on.
I'm thinking zig zags.

The fishes are cute but I probably wouldn't use fish themed.  I do like the aqua/navy/orange though :) 

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i LOVE this one!! 

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but i also love this one. 

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oh, and the other design on my list to try is a window block thing. that's the technical term. something like this:

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i think that last one is my favorite in that style.
so many choices! my pinterest 'sewing' board is out of control.

What do you think? What's your favorite!?

trippy quilt

so as you know i'm in this quilting class.  it's really great and the teacher's awesome, although i'm not crazy about the pattern for the quilt.  she suggested i make a mini project since i'm just starting.  so i've been working on it for weeks and here is the result (so far...)

that took a lot of guts to share on the world wide web. because, well, it's not the most beautiful quilt in the world.
actually, it makes me dizzy.
ben was complimentary of it, but we agreed that it's kinda trippy.
at the same time, i'm super proud of it... because it took FOREVER to cut all those tiny little pieces and put them all together and it's kinda cool how it comes together.
speaking of coming together, the colors/fabrics did not come together like i thought.  i figured picking out the fabrics would be the easy part, but apparently it's not.  it's hard to know what they'll look like all chopped up into various shapes and sizes and pieced together.

(oh, that one's not quite done... still need to add a border, the back and all the stuff that actually makes it a quilt.)

in other quilting news, i cut 175 5-inch squares during a downtown abbey marathon last night (thank you, netflix) for my next quilt project.  this whole process is very addicting.  you think, okay just 10 more squares. but then why not 20. or 100!
the project is a large patchwork quilt - pieced together at random.  mostly red with pops of turquoise and a couple other colors. saw this idea in a book. we'll see if it turns like it is in my head.

Here's some of the fabric (there's a couple more colors yet to be cut!)

back to cutting... did i mention it's addicting? ;)