Online projects

I need to figure out how to make those little checklists that show up on a blog sidebar to remind myself of all the online projects I've started. This is a year for Using The Stash, so I have found a bunch of good scrappy projects to work on (I cut a few dozen more tiny rectangles tonight), with a couple more artsy ones thrown in for good measure. I've already mentioned the Craftsy Block of the Month. I've got numerous things underway inspired by the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - dresden rings, a very scrappy simple quilt that I found in an old magazine (I'll try to scan in the picture sometime; here's the first photo:)...,

...the jelly roll quilts that I'll donate to charity, and also a set of placemats that I'm making so I can (a) practice new piecing techniques, (b) practice different free-motion quilting designs, and (c) have a nice set of placemats. Here's the first of those:

I tried a woven basket quilting pattern that I found at The Free Motion Quilting Project (a terrific resource!) but I was fighting with the thread and needle combo, so I gave up for tonight. I'll get some red Aurifil tomorrow and try again. The design looked decent, but the thread was a yucky hot mess:

I also found a pretty quilt-along to work on; I really like the 3-D star effect in this pattern. I got started today with all 72 of the teensy (they finish at 1.25 x 2.5") flying geese for the inner stars:

I also really like the sound of the Color Palette Challenge, but I doubt that I'll have time to participate in the January challenge. I will share the link and idea with my journal art group, however. I still have to sew a few things for my turning-8-year-old's birthday next week so another quilt challenge probably won't make my prioritization cut... Finally, for good measure, here's a pretty photo I took of my big hexes all stacked up and ready to package for a travelling project: