I'm Baaaaack!

It’s been awhile since I've written a post. It’s not that I haven’t thought of it. I just didn’t think I had anything interesting to write. I had a knee replacement in March. No one wanted to hear me whine about that. Then April was spent going back and forth to physical therapy, a 20 mile trip both ways. It seemed I had no energy for anything else after that. See, I did get to whine. I can’t tell you where the other months have gone, but here I am in September, finally beginning to feel like sewing and talking about it.

My Smith Mountain Morning is finally done! I declared it as my main UFO for my guild challenge so that gave me the push to get it done. Following are some progress photos.

I didn’t use the tri-Rec ruler as instructed in the pattern. I had lots of HSTs left from the star blocks so wanted to use them and besides, I’m lazy and don’t enjoy making those tri-rec points.

In progress.

Putting rows together and singing Hallelujah.

Chevron Quilt

Our Guild supports a local charity which is a facility for abused and neglected children. They have a need for twin sized quilts, especially extra long ones for teenage boys. I made this top last year, also pieced a backing and made a scrappy binding, but never got it quilted. Carrie, one of my team partners, is a long arm Quilter, so she quilted it and I bound it. Bingo, our charity quilt done, my TBQ (to be quilted) stack lowered, and a tall teenager will have a quilt to take with him when he goes to foster care or an improved home situation. So, that’s what I’ve been up to in the sewing room. 

I did get a lot of rug hooking done while taking care of my knee, but will save that for another post.Judy

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March. In like a Lamb

     The winter months have just flown, partly because we have had so little winter weather here in Missouri and partly because I have been on the go.  I covered the Florida trip in a post last month.  That was January.   In February, my older daughter and I joined my younger daughter and family in Puerto Rico for a few days.  I can't say enough good things about that place.  The weather was perfect, the people are so nice, the food is good and if you like beach, there is a lot of it.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

Parrots at a National Forest Preserve

Blue, blue water.

Sunset on the beach.

Old San Juan from El Morro, the old fort.

Two days after I returned from this trip, our guild's retreat happened.  It was a lot of fun and I actually got all of the blocks done for the Floral Churn Dash quilt that I started last Spring.  

The colors are not showing true in this picture.  The background is Moda Bella, Butter, a beautiful pale yellow.  I layered and basted it today, found a great FMQ design on Pinterest, so plan to start quilting on it tomorrow.   More about this one later.  

En Provence is a quilt!  It is quilted, bound and hanging in my dining room.  Here's a picture after it was finished.

I love these Bonnie mysteries, but happy I only made a half size.  

     I hope you are accomplishing some sewing and having some fun too.

Judy

Groundhog Day

   Six more weeks of winter!  In my book, that means six more weeks of good quilting weather.  I'm not sure where January went, but it sure went fast.  I spent a good portion of it finishing En Provence, which is now a flimsy.  Applause, please!

Now if I could just decide how to quilt it.  I usually end up quilting some all over pattern on Bonnie quilts because I can't decide on a block pattern.  I layered and basted it today, so I need to decide soon.  Any ideas will be appreciated.  

    I did spend a week in Florida, sewing with friends.  We had a great time, although a couple of the girls ended up going to urgent care because of colds/flu.  We still managed to get some sewing done.  I worked on En Provence. 

The gal on the left is a brand new quilter and this is her first project.  She did a great job and purchased more fabric during our trip to Quilting by the Bay in Panama City.  I managed to do a little damage there too. 

I took tea towels for everyone last year and challenged them to bring them back decorated this year.   Here's the tea towel show:

Mine is the one with the prairie points.  Here is a close-up.

Here are some more pictures from the week.  

The sand is as white as snow.  

They do a good job of protecting the dunes in this area.  Wooden walkways are built over them to prevent people walking through them. 

Here is my other flimsy from January.  This is a UFO from 2010.  It was featured in McCalls Quilting, a design by the Homestead Hearth girls, Sarah Maxwell and Delores Smith, using Jo Morton fabrics.  When it came out, I immediately ordered the printed star fabric, collected some fat quarters and then it languished in the stash until last year.  It was on my 2016 UFO list, but didn't get finished.  Most of the blocks were done, but not assembled.  I pulled it out again in December and worked on it between mystery clues.  I'm sending it out to be quilted because it is so big, about 90" X 95".  

     That's how I spent my January.  How was yours?

Judy

Step 5 and 6, BKH Mystery

There has been lots of time to sew this week.  We had our Family Christmas on Monday, so the week was short, but uneventful.  I finished the mystery step 5 on Tuesday;

Easy, peasy HST's

  

     Then, step 6 went live this morning.  I read thru the instructions and thought "no problem".  I didn't buy the Essential Triangle tool because I have the Easy Angle and Companion Angle and have used it before.  I really didn't want to learn another method when I was familiar with this one (she said so confidently).  So here was the first one I made.  Notice anything?  Check out the ruler at the top.  Have you ever seen a 6-1/2" unit in a Bonnie quilt?  Neither have I.

Apparently I don't have the memory of a 20 year-old any longer.  I remembered the 3-1/2" measurement and cut my strips that size and used that size on the CA ruler.  Wrong!!  The unfinished hourglass is 3-1/2".  Luckily, I had only cut four blocks, but had cut enough strips to make all of them.  By the way, the purple is my green.  You thought I'd goofed again, didn't you?  Here are the correct units.

They are sure cute. 

     We are almost there.  I keep playing with the units, trying to guess how they will go together.  It won't be long before the big reveal.  

    Here is what I have started in between mystery clues.  There has been a lot of internet chatter about organizing and cleaning sewing rooms and I knew mine had some problem areas.  This being the major one.

This is my Civil War stash.  I cleaned all of the fabric out of my Dear Jane project box (no idea when I will get back to that) and now it won't fit in the bin.  I've been working on folding and sorting, but it will require another bin.  That is one of my goals for 2017, to use some of those CW fabrics.  There must be six or seven quilts in that stack. The open box on the shelf below holds all French General fabrics.  That needs to become a quilt also.  

What are your goals for 2017?  What quilts are on your 2017 list?  

Judy

Clue 4, BKH Mystery

   
Linking up today with Quiltville

     I can't believe I'm keeping up with these mystery clues.  Are this year's clues easier or am I getting more proficient after doing them for three years?  I can remember getting my first look at one of Bonnie's books and thinking "I would never be able to do that".  And I did struggle with the first one, Grand Illusion, and didn't like it when I finished.  Then, in September 2015, my guild sponsored two Bonnie workshops and a trunk show and I've never looked back.  I'm saying all of this and hoping I won't be eating these words on Friday when the next clue goes live.  Meanwhile, here is Clue 4, as well as Clue 3, since I didn't do a post last week.  I'm only doing half until I see how it comes together and substituting blues for purples.

     After the second clue was posted, those of us in the guild that are doing the Mystery, had a Launch Party.  It had a French theme and we were all given berets to wear for the day.  Here is our picture.

  

     It was a lot of fun.  Gina is doing weekly emails with everyone's progress, so it keeps us all on track.  Our picture even made Bonnie's blog this morning!  (That's me on the left, with the green beret').  

    Some other sewing is going on in-between mystery quilt clues.  I'm making some placemats from the beautiful Holly Taylor collection, Town Square.

And one of this year's UFO's came out to play!  Here's the flimsy.

If I get it done this week, I will gift it to the two granddaughters.  They have a new kitten and will appreciate the cats playing with the ornaments.  This was a panel from a quilt store close out sale many years ago.  I think it was $3.99.  

     And finally, here's the reason I've had a pretty productive week.

See all of those icicles?!  We had freezing rain and sleet on Friday, then snow on Saturday, with below zero temperatures all week-end.

   I just kept on stitchin'!

Judy

BKH Mystery, Step 1 and 2

     I hope to link up with Quiltville (http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2016/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-2.html) and ( http://www.patchworktimes.com/2016/12/05/design-wall-monday-december-5-2016/) tomorrow, so here is a post about my Step 1 and 2.  I am only making 1/4 of the blocks so keeping up easily.  I figure I can always enlarge later.

Step 1 , I'm using scrappy neutrals.

Step 2.  This red fabric has languished in my stash for years.

I think it came from a guild silent auction or stash sale.  I have no idea how old it is.  

  

My Christmas decorating is done and this is my newest addition. 

 I finished this quilt just in time to decorate the guest bedroom.  Love this fabric!  It is Richmond Reds from Barbara Brackman.  

Happy December!  We had our first snow this morning.  

Looks like a sewing day to me.

  Judy

November Activities

    Since the first day of November, I have been moving piles of fabric around the sewing room trying to decide on my choices for the Bonnie Hunter Mystery.  Currently, these are my choices.  That burgundy is well aged, so I especially would like to use it for my constant.

     I seldom use Bonnie's exact colors because brights just don't do much for my antiques and primitive decor.  I saw a Civil War fabric selection that was really pretty, so won't settle on anything until I pull some of those to look at first.  

     Our guild meeting was last week and it was the collection day for the quilts we are donating to the Baby Grace program.   You may remember that I have been making crib quilts from the monthly Rainbow Scrap Challenge colors.  Here is the selection that I took to the meeting.  

I kept two of my favorites for any baby gifts I might need and gave my neighbor a choice for a grandchild she has coming in December.  The parents never want to know the gender ahead of time, so she took a boy quilt and the only girl quilt I made.  (Just couldn't resist the pink and green month.)

Here is the pile of quilts that the Baby Grace representative took with her.  I think there were a few added after I took this pic.

As I remember, there were 41 donated.  This program is sponsored by the Methodist Church, so they plan to hang them in the church for awhile before they are distributed.  As you can imagine, I'm very proud of our members.  We plan to continue supporting this program next year, so I will probably be making more, although I don't think I will attempt one a month next year.  I have some UFO's that I should have finished this year, but they got pushed aside to make room for finishing the crib quilts.  

I'm going to dig one of those out this week and see what I need to do to finish.  

Judy  

PS.  Hooking up today with SoScrappySaturday on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/2016/11/scraphappy-saturday-begining-of-end.html

Nine Patch Swap

     One of my favorite Quilt Guild activities is swapping stuff, any kind of swapping; strips, charms, blocks.  Our Swap Queen, Gina plans our swaps and they vary by the month and year.  We do some type of fabric swap every month and then do a block swap over a period of time, six months or a year. Currently, we are doing tiny (3-1/2") Civil War nine patches and little red/white blocks.  Last year, we did 6-1/2" scrappy nine patches in Autumn colors and I brought 80 blocks home at the end of the year.  Wow!  What a bonanza!  They have inspired lots of Internet and magazine browsing, looking for different ideas for using them.  I finally settled on Sisters Choice, a free pattern on the Bonnie Hunter website. My plan was to make it for a donation quilt, but I love it so much that it may have to live with me awhile before moving on.

All of the setting fabrics came from stash, some of it well-aged.  The star point fabric was originally purchased at a quilter's estate sale, so I'm sure it was well-aged too.  The sawtooth border was constructed from the bonus triangles from the sew and flip star points.  I still have more of those to use in another project.

Editing this post:

      We are having some beautiful weather here in Missouri.  Last week, while picking up our mail, I decided to take the Sister Choice along.  There's not much color in the leaves yet, but I found this fence rail to stage it for a photo.

  It's all finished and ready for the quilt show next week.

     With that quilt finished, I decided to have some fun with experimenting with a new technique.  New to me anyway.  

     I've had this book for awhile, and have been interested in trying this technique. I thought it would be fun to experiment with Halloween fabrics.

 You sew strips together into a tube, then slice into blocks, using the 90degree line on a ruler.

They look like a string block, but are much faster with no paper to tear off. The downside?  They have bias edges. So, out came the Best Press.  The instructions made an 11" block, but called for  42" strips.  Most of my scraps were from fat quarters, so I adapted the pattern and made strip sets with 4 strips instead of 8, avoiding a lot of wasted fabric.

     Now, what do do with those cute little blocks?  I found a panel in that scrap bin that someone had given me.  I had always liked it because of the dancing witches.  The little string blocks made a great side border and I soon had another flimsy to add to the TBQ (to be quilted) stack.

Often, my experimental blocks end up in the orphanage, so it was nice to have something to show for an afternoon's playtime.

The scraps got cut into these little pieced strips to use in something else.  What is my takeaway from this little experiment?  Not a good scrap buster, because it creates more scraps.  A quick method to make big blocks from WOF strips, like a jelly roll, but not as efficient for shorter strips.  Then there are those bias edges, which I dislike.  Will I use it again?  Probably not, but never say never.

Meanwhile, I'll keep on stitchin'.

Judy

PS;  I'm linking up with Cynthia at http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com and Judy at http://www.patchworktimes.com/2016/09/12/design-wall-september-12-2016/ today.  You'll find lots of fun there.

J. 

Nautical Knots

      I don't think I am the only quilter who has been obsessed with the latest internet buzz on the garlic knot block.  Bonnie Hunter featured them on her last quilt cam, apparently, and I keep seeing references to them on Facebook, chat groups, etc.  I looked for my issue of Quiltmaker that was supposed to have it in the Addicted to Scraps column, but couldn't find it.  Its in this house somewhere, but thats another subject.  I did see a post from someone else that said it is a traditional block called Arrowhead Puzzle, but my 501 Quilt Blocks book didn't have it.  After chasing this block all over my house and the internet, I finally decided to draft it myself and get it out of my head. How hard could it be?  Its just squares and rectangles.  My first adventure with it took place with my scraps from the Seven Sisters topper from our guild workshop.  There were some 2-1/4" scraps, which I cut down to 2' and made a Christmas Knot.  It finished at 6-1/2" and is cute as a button.

     I thought this would satisfy my obsession, but alas, it wasn't to be.  With the 4th of July rapidly approaching, I had a yen to sew with patriotic fabrics, so out came the red and blue scrap bins.  Suddenly, this little table topper appeared on my design wall.  I'm calling it "Nautical Knots".

     Just in case, anyone else is having garlic knots or arrowhead puzzles swarming in their heads, here is a short tutorial on the one I drafted.

Fabric requirements:

Nautical print - 1/2 yard

Red accent - FQ

Kona Snow background - 1/4 yd.

For each block, cut the following;

6) 2-1/2" squares of nautical print 

2) 2-1/2" squares of red accent

4) 2-1/2" squares of background

2) 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" rectangles of background

Make 2 small blocks in this configuration with a background rectangle and square,

plus a square of the nautical print.

     Make 2 small blocks in this configuration with two nautical squares, an accent square, and a background square.

Make a larger 4-patch with your four components in this configuration.

     This completes the 8-1/2' knot block.  To make the topper, make four of the knot blocks and arrange with the four blocks as the center.  My inner border was cut 1-1/4" to finish at 3/4" and my outer border was cut at 3-1/2 to finish at 3".  The topper will finish at 23".  

     If you get the urge to make one of these, be sure to share it in the comments section.  

Have a great 4th of July!

Judy