Round Robin quiltlet, up close

I just love how my little quiltlet turned out!  It was really fun working on these this past year.  Forcing us to work outside our comfort zone, in either colors or techniques or styles.  And yet, how they all came together.  Here are better details on mine.

this is my block that started it. I chose "JOY" as my theme (it was my 'word' for the year) and I wanted it done in aquas and lime green.  This is a 4 1/2" unfinished block.

Mary added a reverse appliqued JOY

Cheryl added the fence with a few birds sitting on it...

Lisa added the musical note..saying the one thing that kept running through her head when she got my box was, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart..." which led her to do the note. The birds were added later by Linda. 

Candy added the next heart with embroidery

Linda added the cute little 3D birds and also the ones on the musical note 

and don't you think this little guy is just.the cutest?  It looks like he tripped and fell..I love it!

Mishelle added the little beads here and there and the borders and then Jeanne quilted it and did the binding.

Thanks Bias Buddies for a job well done!  

A Bias Buddies Christmas

My quilt group, Bias Buddies, had our annual Christmas dinner and Round Robin Revealing. Usually at Christmas, we have a block exchange, decided by a committee a few months before Christmas. Last year however, we decided to do a Round Robin (similar to the one I did a few times with the Round Robin Bloggers). We all had to start with a 4 1/2" finished block and pass it on to the next person, who had a prescribed size to make, using the owner's choice of colors and theme. Every six weeks or so, we swapped boxes, working on each other's quilts all year long. The last person had to quilt and bind it and add a sleeve. The coordinator of the exchange made labels for all of our quilts, that we all signed. Here's our revealed quilts...

Mary and her beach theme...

Jeanne and her Blue/white dishes theme

Cheryl and her fall theme

Mishelle and her soft greens/yellows theme

Lisa and her soft Romantic theme

Linda and her Monterrey Medallion in aqua and gold theme

Candy wanted everyone to make their favorite block in their favorite colors. And we are a very diverse group as far as likes and dislikes! hats off to Lisa for pulling them all together!

(okay, for the life of me I can't figure out why this won't import corrected. It's correct in my photo albums, but when I try to add photos, it's still sideways. I can't figure it out and I don't want to leave her out, so you'll have to tilt your head! sorry 'bout that!)

and mine..the theme I chose was 'Joy' and lime, aqua, black and white were my colors..

I loved how they each turned out. And I really love mine! I'll show more details in the next post.

Progress here and there

I've been working on lots of projects, I can never decide what's most important, especially with some deadlines 2 months away yet. It's so easy to get distracted and to start thinking about other projects. But Christmas is approaching and my Friday night quilt group has it's annual Block exchange and I thought I would be smart and start working on them now! We have our Annual Christmas dinner and afterwards we go to someone's house and play some silly FQ games and exchange our blocks. We have 8 in our group and every year 2 different people choose what the Exchange Block will be for that year. This year is an Sister's Album block? We all get the same pattern and then we each pass out cards of what type/color fabrics we'd like. We are such a varied group with definite likes/dislikes and we have found that way to be the best way to ensure everyone likes their blocks.

Mary passed out the star point batik fabric and asked us to add more to it to match. Lisa passed out little snippets of the red/gold that she liked and asked us to choose fabrics that looked good with her samples.

Cheryl passed out various pieces of the Holly Jolly line from last year and asked us to coordinate to those colors. She did give us enough of one color to use.

Candy passed out all the 'colored' fabrics and we just were to add our own backgrounds.

Before we swap blocks, we are to put a 'quote' in the middle area and sign it. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to use the same quote for all or choose one for each person.

As I was working on these blocks, it reminded me that I have been getting further and further behind on assembling my blocks of past. So, I dug up the oldest one that wasn't finished from 2004 (we've been doing this since 1997). This is the block that I made for everyone--in their colors of course. This is my block.

We chose a pattern to work from, then made all sorts of revisions, etc. It hardly looks like the same quilt. I'm almost done with the top..I'll share when it's done. 1 almost down, 4 more tops to finish. It's challenging at times to come up with a unique setting for our blocks. We've shown our quilts twice now in a Special exhibit at a local Art's Castle and I'm afraid it will come up again and I'll be woefully behind. So, now is a good time to catch up. :)