Japan and Austria Met and Had a Baby! Quilt, that is!

Yes, I know I actually posted progress for WiP Wednesday, but then something happened. I made more progress! I think someone slipped me some Red Bull or some high powered Mountain Dew! I found some major motivation and went crazy sewing. I think part of it was that I had to look through my posts to find one on a bag I made. I wanted to post it over on Travel Handmade at the Sewing Summit. Well, after looking all over for it, I realized something. I post repeatedly on the same projects until they're done. That's fine but after scanning through several posts, I wanted to see something new. Plus, I saw this quilt along using this pattern and thought it would be ideal for my Japanese/Austrian baby quilt.

For those of you who don't know, I needed to make a baby quilt for a friend. Because I know that he is Japanese/American and his wife's family is from Austria, I decided to make a heritage quilt using Japanese fairy tale fabrics I won from Leila and a charm pack of Moda Hideaway (because it has elements of an Austrian village, old clocks, etc.). I combined those with some Bella Lime and came up with this.

Sweet! I just love it. This quilt top came together so fast! 2 1/2 hours tops. And it's just adorable.

I love that little village print. I wish there had been more than just one in the pack.

I know the colors look like three different quitls but every time I tried to clear up one thing, it made something else look weird on the closeups. Anyway, I just love it. I hope they do. Now I have to attach the lime nursery rhyme print to the back and bind it. At least the baby's not due until November.

I also played around with my WASTE NOT activity. This is from my Diamond Chains quilt along.
I figured out that, with the flying geese and corner set squares version, you end up with a lot of small triangles left over. So I decided to do something with them.

Pinwheels! I originally did two, loved them, and then started chain piecing the others the next day. That's when I figured something out.

Pinwheels have direction, darn it! I didn't realize that until I finished. Luckily I only did two a different direction so I fixed them.
I waited until they were all done to determine a uniform size. Then I played around with patterns.

How cute is that? I have eleven single 4.5" square pinwheels so far and I'm halfway done with the blocks so I should have at least 22 total. I also have enough scraps to make more if needed. I was thinking about making a second version of my Japanese/Austrian quilt (I need to rename this quilt!) since it came together so quickly but I may use these to make a donation quilt for 100 quilts for Kids. Either way I've got to get on the ball.

A little view of some of my work for August.

1. Block 9, Double Star, 2. Block 6, Embroidery 101, 3. Diamond chains, 1st three blocks, 4. Innocent Crush on pinwheels!, 5. Japan Meets Austria, 6. Red & White Hexie, center design
Linking up at Lily's quilts!