Sewing the day away

It's hard to believe we're heading into the last week or so of the January.  I've got quite a bit of sewing on my plate for various bees and swaps.  Thank goodness for my local modern quilt guild's Sew Day over the weekend.  What quilter can resist the lure of a day of camaraderie and sewing?  Not I!  What a great opportunity to get those projects done (but more on that in a bit). 

One of the projects I brought along was my lot of red and teal wonky plus blocks from this Flickr swap.  Sadly, I couldn't use all the blocks I received from the swap because of the broad interpretation of red and teal, so my mission was to make replacements.   A fellow guild member who participated in the same swap was also making blocks for the same reason.  She and I traded a few fabrics and knocked out some blocks to supplement what we kept.  We donated the others to the guild for a charity quilt.  I've still got four more to make before these beauties can become a quilt top:

My bag was full of other projects I brought along (what was I thinking?), but in six hours of sewing time I only made four blocks.  If you've read my post about Open Sew at the local LQS, you'll see I'm a slow sewer.  Quite a bit of time was spent talking to the other guild members and admiring their work.  So many inspiring projects being made, among them Swoon blocks.  I've admired Swoon for a while but have been put off by the size of the blocks (24.5 inches!!!).  After seeing them at Sew Day and more on Flickr, I'm positively smitten and most probably will join the Swoon-Along.

The rest of my time was spent discussing guild charity business with the other charity co-coordinator.  There's an amazing spirit of generosity and good will in the guild.  Jennifer and I have received so much support for the newly launched charity program in the form of fabric and orphan block donations, ideas, and general enthusiasm.  There's been a high rate of participation in making blocks for our first charity project.  So far, we've got one completed quilt, one in the process of being quilted and bound by one of our guild members, and two more guild members took home blocks on Sew Day to make into quilt tops.  Not too shabby for the first month of the program!