UFO Update - June Mystery

My August project #7 for Judy's UFO Challenge is her June 2010 mystery (click here for the free instructions).  It has been sitting in my UFO closet for a year now...waiting, fermenting, aging to perfection. This is how I hang my most recent UFO's. Some quilts even have the backing and/or binding fabric on the hanger with it. I got the idea from Karen's blog when she showed us her closet last year and it has worked well for me in getting my UFO's (that are on my wish list) ready to work on.
The border size for this month's UFO was determined by the piece of fabric I had purchased last year for the border and binding. First I measured the quilt and made the binding. Here it is sitting in my binding basket (with 3 other bindings all ready for other UFO's!) 
Then with the fabric that was left I figured out that there was enough to make a 3 1/2" border. Here it is with the border on (the photo only shows half of the quilt...it's a large quilt!) Now I have half of August left for the quilting and binding...easy peasy!

Design Wall Monday #29

Finally... all the blocks are sewn together from Judy's June mystery!
Here is the quilt top on my (too small for this quilt) design wall, waiting for some motivation to work on the borders.

It looks kind of 'blah' to me, since I am used to working with brighter colours, and brown is a colour that I really don't "know".  But this quilt is going to be a wedding gift for my husband's cousin, who is having a fall wedding, and I think it will be perfect for the intended couple. I am leaning toward a single (easy) border so I can get this done in time for the wedding and won't have to procrastinate!!

Design Wall Monday #27

It's Design Wall Monday! What's on your design wall this morning?

Here are my clue #5 blocks for Judy's June Mystery.  I think that some of my fabric choices are a bit too light, especially the two blocks at the bottom of the wall, so I might take those out. I'll see how it looks when Judy shows us how to put the blocks together with the next step. It's a odd number of blocks (18), so I am excited to see how Judy is going to solve this mystery!

Now that I am caught up with the mystery clues, I'll go back to finishing this quilt.

Design Wall Monday #26

This is what is on my design wall this morning. These are my blocks for Clue #4 of Judy's June Mystery quilt. I think they would make a lovely quilt on their own if they were a little scrappier, with more colours :)  Clue #5 should be posted this week and I hope we get to find out what will become of all the other pieces - flying geese, pinwheels, etc.
Click over to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and see what other quilters are working on this week.

Design Wall Monday #24

Even though it was a busy weekend, I was able to squeak out a few minutes here and there to do some sewing.  I'm surprised that it all added up to being able to finish step #2 of Judy's June mystery quilt.
Here is step #1 on my design wall - 18 sets of flying geese and 18 pinwheel blocks. I had great fun picking out all these fabrics - there are 36 in total since I didn't want any repeats. Some fabrics I bought on the May Shop Hops and some were from my stash. Although the colours look kinda dull in this photo, in real life they look like an interesting "quilt in progress".








I enjoyed making these blocks, and making the swirly centre with the seams on the back of the block (the way Judy recommended). Aren't these little swirls so cute?!?


And on the front of the block, the pinwheel centers came together quite well too.

Here is my June mystery storage box. I took the blocks off the design wall today so I can work on something else.
Here are the flying geese, pinwheels, plus the 4 patches and strips from step #2.

How do you store your WIP's (works in progress)???

I used to have mine stuck into every nook and cranny, in drawers, cabinets and closets, but nothing gets done on the projects using this "system"! So now I have organized many of the WIP's that I want to work on and store them in these see-through containers. Here's one of my WIP stacks.
Better get to work!
Click here to get to "Design Wall Monday" if you want to see what other quilt bloggers are working on this week.

Design Wall Monday #23

Not a lot of sewing going on here this past week, as seems to be the case for many others out there in quilt blog land. Guess we're all out in our gardens...
digging and weeding, trimming and planting.

I did manage to get all the pieces cut out for Judy's June mystery step #1.

My goal was to finish sewing the first step by tomorrow, but I don't think that will happen. I was also hoping to have each block made from a different light and a different coloured fabric...I needed 18 of each. I have 14 combinations so far, so I'll either repeat some or wait until I find other fabrics to add. Still working on sewing the HST's into pinwheels.

And I have finished the 18 year odyssey of hand quilting on this quilt and here is a (not flattering!) photo of me hand stitching the binding down while at a lovely luncheon with my UFO support group last week. We enjoyed a delicious lunch with perfect weather and I made a great start on the binding. I am so excited about approaching the finish line on this project and will likely write a very braggy blog post about all the hand quilting details, with lots of photos later in the week.
What's on your design wall? To check out the design walls listed on Judy's blog - click here.

Mystery Starting!

Remember the strips I was working with a few weeks ago? They are in a finished quilt now...can you tell what the blocks are? I'll show you tomorrow!
Today I have to announce that Judy at Patchwork Times blog has started a new mystery quilt! Don't get mixed up with her Memorial Day quilt recently posted...this is a mystery (my favorite)! The cutting directions are posted here and the first step is posted here. You have 1 week to get step 1 finished before step 2 is posted.

Here is the fabric I have put together for this mystery...something a little different for me. I am using the lighter browns as my 'medium accent' and the darker browns as my 'dark accent'.
It's all washed and pressed but I haven't done any cutting yet...in my mind it was a June mystery so I put off the cutting until June, which is NOW! How did that happen?!?