Newington Group Quilt winner!!

Somehow I never got around to posting photos of the Newington Schoolhouse Quilters' finished group quilts from this year. We used the Roller Rink pattern from Modern Patchwork (with the kind permission of Elizabeth Hartman) in a black-and-white color scheme with pops of brights. Both quilts came out lovely!

Our lucky winner was Jean Scibek!

This second quilt will be donated to Northeast Utilities, our meeting location, for their annual charity auction.

Newington Group Quilt(s)

After a few winter-weather postponements, the ladies of the Newington Schoolhouse Quilters finally managed to schedule a successful worknight for assembling our group quilt. This year we are using Elizabeth Hartman's Roller Rink pattern, using a vibrant combination of blacks, whites, with small random pops of bright color. I made ten blocks a few months ago; the ladies of our group provided over 200 blocks for this project!

We started with about 100 blocks of each border color.

Eleven of us got right to work, starting by sewing blocks into pairs, then pairs into quads, then quads into strips of eight. About halfway through the process, I stopped sewing and started directing, because I didn't want us to end up with too many long units that would eventually need to be taken apart. Before we realized it, we had ten strips of 19 blocks!

The tables filled up fast!

Our energetic co-president Tammy, taking a turn at the pressing table.

Within three hours, the eleven of us had assembled TWO beautiful finished quilt tops! Each measures 76 x 80", a very generous and usable size. The second top actually still needs the final seam sewn, which I volunteered to do in the interests of everyone getting home before it was too late, and because I felt bad for shirking my sewing responsibilities while everyone else worked so hard.

First finished group quilt top! (76 x 80")

Newington Group Quilt blocks

I'm in charge of organizing the group quilt this year for the Newington Schoolhouse Quilters, and our blocks are due tomorrow. I anticipate that we'll have a very good response from our members, since this is such a quick block to assemble, and since people do seem eager to make two full-size quilts, one for a member to win and one to donate to our meeting site for their charitable fundraising. We're using a color variant of Elizabeth Hartman's Roller Rink pattern (I made a nifty pink one earlier this year). I can't wait to see this one go together. I made ten more blocks tonight:

Now I need to spend a few minutes putting together the sign-up sheet so our eager members can get these blocks assembled and off to be quilted. And I just now remembered that I need to make a pincushion (like this one) for our holiday exchange. I like this idea -- kudos to our new co-pres Tammy for arranging such a fun little thing!