Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

This week I've been working on a quilted sign for NEQDC to hang out into the aisle at our booths at our future shows. It's a concept we saw done at Genesee Valley quilt show in June and we loved it so much that I was elected/offered/last one to say aye is it to make a fun sign for us to use. I came up with the concept of a two sided sign with our name in a block at the top and then each of us was to make two blocks representing our pattern style and I would throw them together in a row at the bottom. Quick, easy, and relatively painless. Ha.

Quick quiz, what does the NE stand for? I know, you thought it might be Naturally Elegant. Or Newly Emergent. Or Nasty Eggthrowing. All of which would be great names for my designers group, which is in actuality New England Quilt Designers Cooperative. Northeast would also work, and lucky for us, New England and NE on a map of the USA is the same thing. Good planning, forefathers. But Hotties, that is a LOT of letters to cut out for the sign, especially when you consider I had to cut them all out TWICE so I shortened it to "NE" with the group's blessing, and last night, thanks to Netflix, I was able to get all of them cut out and adhered to both main blocks of the quilt.

This morning I headed downstairs to take these cute little strips of our blocks and sew them to the bottom of each block. Gaze upon these strips and you will see one in each row from each member of the group. If we look at the top strip, that would be a Lava Lamp block from Judy Damon, a fun applique block from Kristi Parker, a snowbally block from Barbara Chojnaki, a Take Four block from Cary Flanagan, a Syncopated Ribbons block from moi, and a very fun Purple Moose from our head moose, Terri Sontra. I will be honest in tooting my own horn to say this block part of the sign was my idea and was brilliant.

What was not brilliant were my math skills. Just to review, 4 x 6 = 24. Not 18. Which is what I was thinking when I cut my main blocks to 12 x 16. Imagine my horror when I saw that this is how they would go together this morning, while I was still dealing with cramping hands from scissors last night:

Thankfully, I remembered that I suck at math but immediately rejoiced that I had at least done the central block with one side divisible by 4. Dumb luck at it's finest. So I just reworked the design (after all, if I couldn't do that I wouldn't be much of a quilt designer, would I?) and the result, I have to say, is adorable.
Here is one side:

Here is the other:

I decided I didn't care to put a binding on and take away from the blocks at all, so it's just poor-man serged using a big old zig zag. Much quicker than trying to set up and figure out my serger this morning.

If you are heading to Maine Quilts in a few weeks, please stop by and check out our sign in person! It will be its first time at a show and it needs some lovin'!