Calendar Boxes and Block Challenge

While at coffee with a bunch of quilters, someone mentioned that they couldn't bear to throw away their old quilt calendars. I remembered a box that was made from squares that are cut from greeting cards. Here are some instructions. I thought it would be easy to adapt the instructions to calendar pages and showed everyone how to make these boxes at the next two coffees.

Each year the Quilters Guild of Dallas issues a challenge to make a block for a quilt to be made for their collection. This year the theme is Oriental Expressions. We had to use the provided black, red and gold fabric in an original oriental design and had to include one 3D element. I've made a challenge block every year since 2000. I like that it makes me practice my traditional appliqué skills. Here is the block I did for this year's challenge.