Double 9 Patch

I finally made some progress on a quilt today.  It is far from finished but here it is so far...

The colors are very bright jewel tones.  They will be tamed with a black floral fabric in between. 
This quilt is for my mother in law.  My husband chose the fabrics- he is a lot better at that than I am.  He really liked the dramatic look of the red and black quilt I did for my son and I think that is what he was going for here also.  It is going to be a gorgeous quilt when I get it together!

Here are my quilting helpers.  They are my constant companions. The white one is Sophie, she keeps my sewing chair warm when I get up to iron the blocks.  The blonde one, that is supposed to be Apricot colored, is Tess.  She is the one that tends to get into stuff, like getting tangled in thread or trying to clean up my fabric scraps.  I couldn't quilt without them!

 
Here are some more blocks from the Underground Rail Road Quilt I am slowly working on.  However, this bowtie block came out a good deal bigger than the other blocks.  I am thinking I must have missed a step of trimming the blocks before I sewed them all together.  I will probably have to make another one.

Here is the wagon wheel block.  3 blocks down and 12 more to go.  I hand appliqued this- which I NEVER do!  I am trying to stay as authentic to the civil war era as possible while still getting the quilt done.  I got some more civil war era fabrics in the mail so now I can get moving on some more blocks. 

If you are joining me in creating an underground railroad quilt, and don't have the E. Burns book, I am sure you can find each of these patterns at quilters cache or somewhere else online.  So far I have made the wagon wheel, monkey wrench and bow tie blocks. 

Hope everyone has had a great weekend.  I feel very renewed after managing to get the double 9 patches done-actually I have 3 more to finish but I made MAJOR progress today!