Design Wall Monday: Jelly beans, a finish, new flimsy, and genre labels

 It's March already!   The cardinals are establishing their territories and letting the neighborhood know every morning. The lengthening daylight is welcome.  A heavy snowfall Tuesday closed the library early and postponed the board meeting for a week, but sunny skies prevailed this weekend and I was able to get out and walk.

Sew Many Swaps hosted a Jelly Bean Swap again this year. Here's what I got from Sheila G. who lives in Omaha but who's been in Vermont this past month.  (In return I sent her three FQs, thread, a bag of Belly Flops (seconds) from the Jelly Belly factory just over the state line, and a memo pad from the Library of Congress.  I hope the box will be waiting for her when she gets back to Omaha, 'cause that's where I mailed it.)

The Block Swappers exchanged 6" churn dash blocks in Civil War reproduction fabric. The swap blocks came this past week, the same day as the jelly beans. I put them up on the design wall and by Saturday evening here's what they turned into. The light setting fabric is a shirting print.  The blue setting fabric and the border are different prints.  Setting and borders used 2-3/8 yards.

 I finished quilting "Dot Takes the Cake"
which you can see in its entirety here .  These two pictures show closeups of the cakestand quilting and the continuous curves in the border blocks.
The backing and binding used 3-5/8 yards.

(I've used 6 yards of fabric so far this month! )

The ALA Biblioquilters are making a genre label quilt for this summer's scholarship auction. Here are my contributions. The skull-and-bookend is from an illustration that I cut out of Booklist (ALA's book review journal) about 25 years ago. 

These two blocks have been at the top of my procrastination list. I just couldn't wrap my brain around how to make them. I nearly told the quilt coordinator I would have to back out....but I pulled out fabric, traced the letters, and in less than an hour they were finished.  I spent more time worrying about them than it took to make them. (Isn't that the way with so many things we procrastinate about?)

See what other quiltmakers have on their design walls at Judy's  Patchwork Times .