dresden pillows and a quilt-along with Lily

Late in February I made this oh-so-girly dresden plate pillow for my Pillow Panache class at QIJ.  I was a little worried the dotty background would push the whole thing over the edge into the land of "tooth-achingly sweet", and I'll admit it's close to that edge (okay, it's precariously perched on that edge), but not quite over it :)

I'll be teaching a group of ladies how to make this pillow next Friday.  I also made another version with most of the same fabrics, but I didn't "point" the ends of the petals, so it looks more like a wheel. ( I haven't decided on the center fabric yet, so that's why it's not shown here.)

As many of you know, I LOVE putting zippers on my pillows.  But these last couple of pillows, I have become enamored with this contrast binding edge envelope closure.  So here it is once again...

Early this summer we are going to have two new baby boys in our family.  Are they called "grand-nephews" when they are the children of my niece (the sweetest girl in the whole wide world) and my nephew (the one who is oh-so-generous with his technological skills)?  I can never remember the proper terminology for that familial relationship... And just to clarify - the babies are not twins and my niece and nephew are not married!  My nephew and his wife are due first in May, then my niece and her husband in June.  I do have some family tree branches that cross in ways requiring lengthy explanation - all perfectly legitimate and legal - but when your brother-in-law is also your uncle, you need to be very specific when describing familial relationships, hence the lengthy explanation.  Since we are digressing SOOO far off topic, I'll save the brother-in-law/uncle story for another post....

Oh yeah, so baby quilts... My friend Lynne over at Lily's Quilts is hosting a dresden quilt along and she's making non-pointy dresdens too!  I'm going to play along and maybe use the quilt as a baby gift (if either set of parents really likes these colors, that is).  I'm planning to change things up a bit from her plan and make different size dresdens throughout the quilt, and so far this is the fabric stack I'm planning to work with...

I'd like to find a brighter orange and a tomato-red and then I'll feel like the palette is complete.  The background will be Kona in snow.  Any other colors you think I should add in?

If you're up for a quilt-along for all skill levels, hop on over to Lily's and sign yourself up!  You can see her sample here.  I must warn that the discussion threads over there start out all respectable and ladylike, but they quickly go downhill into questionable, but HILARIOUS innuendo.  If you have no sense of humor, stay away.  Don't say I didn't warn you ;-)