Signature Blocks

I'm just back from a trip with work, and not having any new sewing done for over a week I thought I might share a project in progress with you and get back to quilting hopefully this evening!   Our Thursday night sewing group decided we would work on a group project.  It's fun to be making something with other people and seeing their fabric choices and choosing fabrics that might tie the whole thing together.  To start with we chose some free block patterns from Moda with fabric choices to suit a Spring feeling. 

Moda released instructions for over 30 9" blocks under the Signatures quilt-a-long and Friendship quilt-a-long and they are still available to download.  Slyvia's stitches has a neat listing where you can access the block instructions with links to the Moda designers who chose the blocks.  Not all of the links to the designers are still live and if you are making any of these, read the instructions through first, especially the cutting instructions! I don't think there were any of us who didn't make a mistake or end up with a block too small at some stage!

My first block was the Courthouse Steps designed for Deb Strain using her Seascapes range.  The centre of all the blocks uses a 3.5" square in a light coloured material and the idea is for the block maker to place a signature there.  Imagine a whole quilt of 9" blocks with signatures in the centre; a nice record of a group project.  We're choosing pretty fabrics instead but a fussy cut motif would be cool too.  I'm using some layer cake squares of Kate Spain's Sunnyside range with some leftovers of Coquette by Chez Moi.  Some of the other blocks have vibrant pink and green in them and I'm hoping these will work with the other blocks. 

As I was making the second block I thought wouldn't these be really cool as quilt labels for the back of a project, pieced in somewhere?  I just love this label on the back of a mini-quilt I received as a swap item by Christina DiMarco and every time I look at it, I think, I must make a better effort at labelling my quilts!