A few UFOs finished!

Today is a warm, sunny, not very humid day.  Perfect, I thought, for picture taking.  I found it is a little too sunny, so please excuse the glare and the wrinkles that last week's humidity caused.  

This year, Aby Dolinger posted a block of the month project called "Favorites."  I always like her patterns because of the very clear directions.  I put my blocks together a little differently, though, combining Aby's blocks with my guild's blocks of the month.  Of course, that meant I had a few too many blocks, so some made a nice back.

I love the background fabric which is from a line called "Pressed Flowers," and has flecks of burgundy, gold, and greenish blue.  I used quite a few scraps and added a few fabrics, too.  The binding is a floral gold with burgundy accents.

This measures 47" x 47" and I quilted it fairly simply in a grid, with a smaller grid in the plain areas.  It will be a nice wall quilt, table topper, or even a quilt for a modern baby.

Those fold lines worry me, so I now have the quilt spread out over the back of our sofa and hope they go away.  If not, I'll use a little steam and then let it hang some more.

Yesterday I finished a quilt I'm calling "Scrappy Town," made of variously sized house blocks.  I found a free pattern on the Fat Quarter Shop's website called "Brick House" and thought I'd use it for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  After making the block a few times, I wasn't totally happy with it, so I decided to add some other sized house blocks here and there.   I think they add variety, and I enjoyed paperpiecing some of the blocks.

The resulting 45" x 45" quilt also uses scraps of muslin and 2" scrappy squares from my vast collection.  I quilted with my walking foot, mostly outlining and  crisscrossing the squares.  I loved making those tiny 3" houses, but I don't think I could endure making a whole quilt out of them.  This is a good solution.

The back of the quilt is a yellow blender and the binding is a yellow print that I've had for ages.  I had just enough to go around, thank goodness.  I ended up with three 2.5" squares for my 2.5" square scrap box.

Now I'm pondering what to do with all the multicolored 6" blocks of the month I've made in my online quilt group.   I had them lined up row-by-row fashion, but that seems too dull somehow.  Now I have 9 wonky star blocks auditioning for the center of a medallion quilt.  I could also make a haphazard sort of layout with fillers, again using my trusty 2" or 2.5" squares.  I'll keep shuffling them around for a while before deciding.