MILLYPENNY

Last night I finished quilting a hand block for the International Quilting Festival of Ireland ( IQFoI) which is taking place in Galway in May. At the festival they're going to have a welcome banner made up of hundreds of hand blocks from around the world). Last time I checked, the deadline for submission of the blocks was the 1st February; so I was hurrying to get the 2nd block finished last night. Have just checked their website and you can now submit blocks up to the 1st March. To make the blocks I made a monoprint of my hand, added my name and town using alphabet stamps and then free-motion quilted the block. I got a print of my mother's hand to make the 2nd block, and made it in the same way, just used the stamps to go around the hand this time.

 This is what I'm working on at the moment - a throw quilt using 12 fat quarters. I've had a fat quarter pack of "Sugar Snaps" collection in my stash for a few years, so finally chopped it up last weekend. You can't really tell from the photo, but this quilt is seriously bright! Think it might be the brightest quilt that I've ever made. Not sure that I like it too much at the moment, but maybe when it's quilted I might come around to liking it more. Have adjusted the layout slightly from the photo, and got the borders added last night, so hopefully tonight I can get it basted...

I finished this wall-hanging just before Christmas - keep forgetting to take a decent photograph of it for the blog though! The quilt was started last summer at a Lynn Edwards workshop on "Patchwork in Perspective".

For 2012, I had great plans to finish off my UFO's before starting any new projects, but last night I started cutting out a new quilt! Ooops... Ah well, in my defense I did finish 2 quilts over the Christmas holidays and have another 2 quilt tops ready to be basted, so that is progress! Here's one of the quilts that I finished off a few weeks ago - The pattern was from a quilting book called "Living Large" which has some really nice patterns in it. The fabrics were by Anna Maria Horner - I had 12 fat quarters of one of her collections for ages, so finally got to use them on this quilt. I also got a hand block finished up for the International Quilting Festival of Ireland (IQFoI).This is an in-progress photo - I painted my hand with green paint and used that to get a real "hand-print" for the block. I've added further details with stamping, quilting etc. I've finished stitching the block so will try and get a photo of that up tonight.