I've been delinquent.   
i finished up two more swoon blocks several weeks back.  
it was a windy day.... not the best for a photo shoot, but here you go, blurriness and all.

Still swooning.  Slowly but surely.   I now have four blocks completely finished, and all others in various stages.   That counts as halfway to nine, right?    It's exciting to see it coming together and I've made some new (to me) discoveries with these blocks and all the precise piecing.

Spray starch.  Stiff fabric!  Who knew?   I'm not quite convinced yet that I like it, but it certainly seems to help with trimming things down to size - especially all those HSTs.    I also picked up a 3 1/2" square ruler which has made truing them up against the diagonal seams a breeze.

Pins.   Okay these aren't new to me, but I tend not to be much of a pin-er.   These blocks I'm pinning.   A lot.  Each side of every seam, and one in between.   It takes time, both putting in and taking out, but it sure makes a difference in keeping all those points in alignment.

Pilot Frixon Pens.  I'm pretty giddy about this one.   A fine tip pen (and not a sewing specific pen either) that disappears with ironing.    That's right.   Press your seam and it's gone.  Perfect for marking the diagonal on those pesky flying geese.   I picked mine up at the quilt shop in Long Beach Washington during our last-hurrah-before-school-starts trip to the beach, but they're available at most office supply stores.  A few warnings though - ink will reappear if the fabric gets cold before washing (although it will iron out again) and it seems to slightly fade blue fabrics.   For marking on the back side however, like I've done, it doesn't matter.

Seams.  I have traditionally been a side-presser with a few exceptions, but for the life of me I haven't been able to consistently press these blocks so the final seams are all opposing.   I have since diagrammed it out and it looks good in theory, but I'm not overly optimistic.  I may be doing more open seams in the future....   luckily the spray starch helps with this too.   I have also been plagued with my down-facing seams flipping when they pass over the needle plate.   Then, in a rare moment of brilliance, it occured to me that I could actually adjust the adjustable feet on the extension table to make it just a tad bit higher than the plate.  Yep. That fixed it.  I felt pretty stupid about this one.  But it ranks right up there with the new pen.

I might be starting a new quilt.  or two.  
but I have two that are almost finished.  
That balances out, right?  

First up is a Swoon quilt.  Finally, after admiring the pattern and quilts for so long!  
The delay in starting had as much to do with finding the right fabric as it did with [almost] finishing up other projects.   When Tula Pink's Nightshade arrived in the shop, I couldn't resist any longer.   The Spider Blossom print in particular pushed me over the edge.

I've selected three of the five prints in the collection and grouped them with an assortment of coordinating solids, from left to right:
kona parsley 198
kona olive 1263
moda bella celery 9900 72
moda bella dusty jade 9900 38
moda bella teal 99000 87
kona azure 1009
cotton couture peony
kona wood rose 1393
cotton couture primrose
the lavender is unknown, but very close to moda bella 9900 33 

Here they are cut into squares and paired up:

(I ended up not using the olive)

and sewn into a gazillion half square triangles:

I may be a little crazy, but I sewed all the HSTs for the entire quilt first.  and I cheated.   I overcut my squares slightly and will trim them down to size whenI need to sew them together.  Is this lazy of me?  I don't know.  I'll have to do the work eventually.  I like to avoid the stress of cutting everything perfectly, sewing perfectly, pressing prefectly, but still get close-to perfect blocks.  I'm sure I'm not the only one that does this!

(The neutral solid is bella natural.)