WIP: Zig zag quilt

True to my word, I got off my butt and started up on the zig zag quilt for my son. After my last post I had a surge of energy and decided to use that second wind to start cutting out fabric. Then last night the wee one went to bed early (gasp!) and I was able to get some sewing done since Brett took it upon himself to fold the laundry and do dishes (double gasp!). How therapeutic it was to sew some piece work. I had originally thought sewing 32 squares that will soon be 64 triangles would take a while but it seriously took me less than 15 minutes!! It really does make one feel like they've got a lot accomplished.

Another surprise last night was that my little one didn't wake up as per usual at midnight for a feeding, so I was able to continue on without breaking. It almost felt like a game - how much can I get done before the baby wakes up?? Geeky, I know. I figured once I started cutting apart the triangles that he would wake up. Nope.
I had set up an assembly line of ironing the blocks open, listening for the little cries of a hungry baby. Nope, not yet. So I set to work on doing the most tedious (to me that is) and my most disliked part about quilting - squaring up all the blocks! Ugh. At first I was just cutting off the excess tabs at the corners where the 2 fabrics meet, but after 4 blocks I realized that I was being lazy and the blocks weren't exactly square. I had an internal battle as to whether or not to leave them as is or if I should take the extra time to make sure each square was square. The perfectionist in me won, claiming that I will thank myself later when I'm sewing the blocks together to form the zig zags and not cursing at them when they don't match up correctly. My rotary cutter and my cutting mat are currently my new best friends!

How deceiving the blocks are to the eye...they all looked like perfect squares...here's the proof that they weren't:
Yep. Those are the trimmings. I got 52 finished blocks done, only 12 more to get through. Then onto the fun part...sewing!