I guess I'll never really be caught up...

This quilt was made by our group as a birthday gift for Nikki's boyfriend, Tony. It's the first group quilt that has been finished, because though we worked on Kat's first, she has been immobilized by back pain and can't even sit up to sew. I completed an extra 9 or 10 blocks for her quilt in the hopes that she'd be able to work on her quilt after a steroid injection, but it has done little good to this point. (I should have taken pictures of those blocks to post here, but I was so excited to give them to her that I forgot.)

Anyway, back to Nikki's quilt. Since it was a quilt for a guy, we had to make it manly, and Tony is way into fish and water and surfing. Nikki gave us the dimensions and the flowy, organic water theme and let us run wild. Below is my strip:
I cut the background waves out with my rotary cutter and straight stitched through the middle of each. Then I realized I would have to zig-zag stitch the edges down to avoid too much fraying. I found scientific illustrations of the fish on the internet, separated out the colors and chose fabrics for each of the colors. I then made a freezer paper applique of each of the colors and fused the top ones to the base fish shape. Then I machine stitched the 3 fish to the strip, and around each of the appliqued colors. Then I hand-embroidered the details (eyes, fin lines, etc.) on each fish. It was quite a process, but it was fun and I was able to try some new things.

Here are everybody's strips together on the morning of our show-and-tell meeting.

This is everyone, minus Kathryn, plus Tony. (L to R) Marina, Deanna, me, Tony, Nikki, Sara and Deirdre. Tony's birthday is the day before Ava's, so Nikki gave him his quilt at Ava's party. His parents and sister were also in attendance—it was great to meet them and to show off our "mad crafty skills" to a new audience. :)