Quilt Guild

I have been negligent in not telling you that I have joined a newly formed quilt guild.  There have only been 2 meetings so far.  We meet on the second Monday of every month.  There are maybe 20-25 members so far!  Most of our activities have been organizational so far, we voted on a name for our group:  The Lafayette County Sew 'n Sews!  I think it will be an interesting group with fun things to do.

Our first activity is "Birthday Blocks."  In the month before your birthday, you bring in a square (@ 8") of focus fabric and pass out one square to each person.  They have to take it home and cut it apart and make a quilt block with it for you.  The next month, they bring it back to the meeting and give it to you.  You then have 1 year to make a quilt with all these birthday blocks.  We discussed this at our first meeting, and so 3 ladies have Dec. birthdays, and brought focus fabric squares to pass out.  Here are the 3 focus fabrics:

and here are the quilt blocks I made with them:

The first two are called Spider Web blocks, and they are both 12.5 inches so they will finish off as a 12" block.  The last one is called Gate and Stiles, and is an 8.5 block (finished off at 8".)

I had a hard time with the larger blocks because there really wasn't much focus fabric to work with.  An 8 inch square couldn't even give you one strip long enough to cross the entire block!  You had to cut a lot of smaller pieces, and so (I think) you lose the focus of the "focus fabric." It was hard to find a pattern with pieces small enough so you could get enough, but large enough so that you can see the design of the fabric. In contrast, the last block is a lot smaller and the pieces could be bigger, and the focus is easily seen.  I enjoyed making these blocks though, and the challenge was a lot of fun!  Next month is MY month to bring a focus fabric.  I think I will bring bigger blocks of focus fabric for the people so they will have more options.  It's definitely something we need to discuss.