Design Wall Monday - friendship squares

 First of all - a little bragging is in order.  The South Dakota State University Jackrabbits won their first ever national championship on Sunday, beating their arch football rivals NDSU in Frisco Texas in the FCS championship game.  I stole the photo below from Facebook.  It sure was fun to watch (on TV) the game and cheer on my alma mater. 

The quilt guild I belong to has a long standing tradition, of sharing "friendship squares" when they travel and get to visit quilt shops.  We cut a 6" square for each member.  And since we are a fairly small guild, it is not a huge investment.  And of course it's voluntary, but definitely a fun tradition.

After the guild meeting on Saturday, I realized I had quite a stack of new blocks from several months' meetings in my "guild bag" to add to the project box at home where I keep them.  Back in 2016 I used a bunch of the squares as star centers, and called the quilt Traveling Stars. It's queen sized, and lives on the bed in our basement guest room.

Over the years a few of these squares have been used in other projects too, when I needed just one square of something.  One of my guild friends mentioned as we were leaving the meeting that the Beads block we're doing for Quilts of Valor would be another good use of the friendship squares.  Yes!!  So of course when I got home I just HAD to try that idea out immediately, right?

Here is that Beads block on the right, using one of the new squares.  And the block on the left is one of the framed squares that I've been making the past year for RSC.  And since that project box was out, I had to count the finished blocks in the box.

I had decided this fall to separate this block collection into "boy" versions and "girl" versions for donation quilts.  I needed just one more boy block to make a quilt top, so that became the new plan.  

There was a great little bicycle friendship square in the box but it was just slightly too small, so I simply added a narrow border, then added the rest of the block pieces.  In the end, that little narrow white frame won't stand out in the quilt.  BTW - this is a Pat Sloan block from her Winter Fun sew-along, and was free on her website.

So here are all of the boy version blocks laid out on my Design Floor.  The block centers have lots of sports, animals, camping, and cowboys.  This wasn't on my January list of projects, but since it was so close to being done it just made sense to at least get it to flimsy stage.  Hopefully this week!

What's on your design wall this morning?

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