January Goal: Complete!

Whew! I finished my niece's quilt top for my A Lovely Year of Finishes January goal. At this rate, she'll definitely have it before she starts walking. :)

This is my own design; I had made quilts for Rachel's two older sisters using a FQ bundle and wanted to create something for her that used the scraps I had left. I supplemented with solids/tonals in the same colors and came up with this patchwork pennant. My favorite part? A few of the pennants are double-sided and only stitched down at the top so they "flap." (You can kind of see it in the photo below--the green pennant off to the right.)

I am planning to quilt this one myself (the first niece or nephew quilt I will have done that for) because I have a plan, and because the quilt is nicely broken off into sections. I'm going to do the orange peel design in the fourpatches and echo quilt around the pennants. Wish me luck! 

Here's a question, though--would you zig zag the pennants down (not the flapping ones, but the rest), or just straight stitch close to the edges? I'm leaning toward zig zagging because this quilt will get a lot of use and I feel like the edges of the pennants would hold up better.