Comics quilt

For my March "Empty-the-UFO-bin" project, I picked the comics tumblers that I put together sometime last year. I found this comic-book fabric in a scrap pile somewhere and thought it was fantastic. I pulled a whole bunch of rather ugly-ish coordinating fabrics to make the contrasting tumblers, and used a country blue (my least favorite color) as the border. I did very simple quilting on this one - just echoing all of the seams 1/4" on both sides - so it only took two afternoons to get the whole thing done. I was lucky to find a yard of the border fabric still in the remnant pile at my favorite LQS, so the binding actually matches the front. The back is lots of fun - Monopoly cards on a hot pink background. 65 x 72 inches.

Finished group quilt (top)

The ladies of Newington Schoolhouse Quilters met one final time to finish what has turned out to be a spectacular group quilt. The top is ready, and we will now be contacting long-arm quilters. Thanks to Anna, Ginger, Jean, Jeannie, Joan, and Deb for all of their hard work today, and to Linda for piecing that gigantic back.

Craftsy blocks for March

I made the March blocks for the Craftsy block of the month yesterday. I found that I wasn't a big fan of the tedious process of making these string-pieced blocks (I think I've spoiled myself recently with too many quick-assembly designs), but I do like the outcome. The batiks in the spiderweb block are tiny strings left over from a wallhanging I made when I first started quilting. Glad I kept them - they look great contrasting with Tangerine Tango!

Preemie quilts and free-motion practice

Since I don't have enough pinks to make a noodle quilt this month, I decided to make a few "quilties" for the local hospital - these are teeny little quilts (18 x 24") used for preemies in the NICU. I'll probably do a few more of these, since they only take about an hour each. Depends how much batting I have around.

I'm also still working on my free motion skills. I did a spiral flower suggested in this month's FMQ tutorial on the 21" square that I made for the rainbow scrap challenge. It's not perfect, but I think it's a cheerful design:

What's on my desk

Working on the scrappy brick quilt. I love this look.

Scrap Happy Weekend

March's rainbow scrap challenge color is PINK, which, as it turns out, I do not have in large amounts. I don't think I'll be making a pink noodle quilt this month, both because I don't have enough pink fabrics and because I'll be doing some actual work so my quilting time will be much more restricted over the next few months. I did manage to put together the pink dresden plate and 3" squares last weekend:

I also got my scrappy placemat together. This month I used tiny (1.5 x 3") bricks (which I'm also in the process of making a huge quilt). I had a piece of batting right next to my desk, so I used this as an opportunity to work on this month's free-motion quilting challenge. I picked a puffy clouds motif from a book that I won as a door prize at Sew Inspired last summer. I love how pretty this motif looks:

The back view really shows off the quilting: