Magnolia Mystery Update

Progress is continuing on my Magnolia Mystery. It's slow, but it's certainly progress!

I got out my cute white Featherweight 221K called "Sweet Baby Jayne". It's such a joy to sew on this machine but I worry about wearing her out. However, I also do not want her to spend her whole life in a dark closet with no attention at all. So on special occasions, I treat myself to a sewing session.  Her stitch is lovely and her sound is soft and sweet.

There are 3 different block patterns to sew for this step of the mystery and I made a sample of each block. However I sewed one of the sample blocks incorrectly, so right from the start I was using the seam ripper. The correct blocks have the paper notes pinned on, and the wrong block is under the seam ripper. It has since been dismantled! All the block components needed to sew the required number of blocks are now ready to mass assemble. Progress should be much faster now...fingers crossed!

A Good Friend!

Well thank goodness for Cynthia! She read Monday's blog post showing my Emerald Stars quilt and spotted one errant block. That is a good friend who takes the time to email you and say... um, don't know if you noticed but there is a component in one of the stars that is turned?
For real?
I look again at the photo and sure enough, there it is! I have looked at this quilt sooooo many times while piecing it, while photographing it, and while blogging about it. Why didn't I see it before?!?! 

Sometimes people put in one "humility" block and rumour has it that maybe it is an amish tradition to do this on purpose (read about it here). I make enough mistakes accidentally and do not want to add another one on purpose!
This is definitely not that!

Sometimes we are just blind to reality, and can't see what is right in front of our face! It takes a good friend to be brave and to tell you the truth! So a huge thank you to Cynthia for giving me a chance to fix that mistake, because I would have really felt disappointed with myself if it was quilted right into the finished quilt. 
So now... the mistake is corrected and border #1 is added.
Kevin and I have a deal that I will add one border a day.
I didn't specify how many days will be between the border additions!  *snort*
Linking up to Let's Bee Social.

Design Wall Monday

The inside of Kevin's mystery quilt is finally sewn together! The last step was posted 2 weeks ago, and it was a lot of sewing to get the blocks and sashings all sewn together.

Now it is time to get the border pieces together and get the 3 borders added. Adding borders is really not my favourite activity (understatement of the year!) and this is sometimes when a project starts the slow march toward the UFO closet while waiting for borders. Let's hope I don't lose momentum with this one!
Hop over to Small Quilts to see more design wall postings.

Design Wall Monday

My sewing machine should be smoking from all the stitching it's been done lately on Kevin's mystery quilt called Sapphire Stars. This is my progress over the weekend. 
All 12 star blocks are sewn and many of the sashing units are together. You can see all the blocks on the right hand side are hanging off the wall because that's just how big my design wall is. 
The next step is to sew the vertical columns together, and get all the columns joined. Then comes the 3 pieced borders adventure!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.

Sewing up a storm!

Kevin's mystery quilt has had me sewing like a fiend! This quilt top really needs to be finished this month, so I am spending every spare minute organizing the parts and pieces into larger units. Here are the first 6 (of 12) blocks. This is not the layout but it's getting closer. The sashings are also labour intensive and I'm working on those as leader/enders when constructing the star blocks.


But first I wanted to sew together the border pieces because I had a good start on the those units.


There are two kinds of borders - one for the top and bottom (on the right), and another one for the sides (on the left).

It's coming along well and pieces are fitting together as they should. 
Linked up to Oh Scrap!

Mystery Progress

The Sapphire Stars quiltalong finale was posted last week over at Kevin The Quilter. It has been really fun making this quilt and having NO idea how it was going to come together!
Here is my first block on the design wall. 
There are many more blocks to finish, and lots more components to work on, included an interesting pieced sashing and two types of borders. I look forward to working on this quilt more in the coming weeks. 

There is a teeny tiny bit of self imposed pressure to finish this in October because Bonnie Hunter's annual mystery quilt will be starting in November and it might be too confusing to be sewing too mystery quilts at the same time!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.

Mystery Quilt Finish

Humble Quilts Quiltalong

This must be a blogging record for me with daily posts and THREE finished quilts in a week! The first finish was the Tetris bed quilt, yesterday's finish was a baby quilt and today's finish is this adorable 21" miniature quilt.
Humble Quilts hosted a mystery quiltalong called Palmateer Point. The layout was posted on Monday and because it's a small quilt, I was able to quickly put the pieces together and finish the quilting with some straight lines.

The brown and blue fabrics are Shweshwe fabrics from South Africa, and were lovely to work with.  I'm so happy to have them in a finished quilt!

We (the quilt and I) went for a walk to find a good place to take a photo. Turns out there were many good places!
Thanks to Lori for a really fun mystery quilt adventure! Click here to see more variations from the quiltalong.

Mysterious Blocks on the Design Wall

I have been working away on Kevin's mystery quilt called Sapphire Stars. Here are the latest finished blocks for step #5 up on the design wall. 

First I cut all the background squares the wrong size. For a while I just could not believe I did that. I was clearly in denial!
The instructions clearly said 
 "cut squares 6 7/8", and then I went ahead and cut them 6 1/2".  Why? I guess my brain just short circuited on me! 
Once I calmed down, I had to re-cut all the squares using the correct measurement and then of course didn't have enough fabric. So I added in two more fat quarters that are light with green dots and I really like how those blocks look. 
This is an interesting quilt with just these blocks on their own!


But somehow the above blocks are magically going to be sewn to these blocks to make a quilt design. I have no idea how all these units are going to fit together!

I have also been sewing a lot of HST blocks this past week for two other mystery quilts.

At the top are the HST blocks for step #3 of the Palmateer Point quiltalong. The brown fabric is shweshwe with a caramel coloured neutral. This quiltalong is a miniature and the next step will be posted today over at Humble Quilts.
And the 72 white and yellow HSTs are for the Magnolia Mystery. I am using up scraps from my Swoon quilt for this project and don't think I'll need to buy anything to make the lap sized version. New instructions come out once a month, so I'm ready for October's step which will be posted on Thursday.
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.

Shweshwe for the Quiltalong

Indigo Shweshwe

As my blog readers know, I have a million quilts on the go and so many projects already to work on. In fact there are 4 mystery quilts in various stages of progress on my work surface today! 
But of course I'm starting Lori's new "Palmateer Point" quiltalong because:
a) it's just a quick tiny little quilt, 
b) I've enjoyed so many of her previous projects - you can see some of them here, here and here, and 
c) I may have a bit of an addiction problem! LOL

I decided to use a long saved treasure of Shweshwe fabrics that I received from my friend Celeste. I don't want them to be on a shelf in a closet anymore... they need to be in a quilt and this is the one!
The wrong sides of the fabrics are stamped with either "six star toto" or "three cats" which indicate authentic Shweshwe fabrics from South Africa. There is a lot of dye discharge with these fabrics so you must prewash before using them. And they are quite stiff, so washing them first makes them more soft and fun to sew with.


Here are my 4 patch units for step #1 with a wonderful variety of indigo prints. Part #2 has already been posted, so I'm hoping to sew those blocks tonight.
Are you joining in with this quiltalong?
Linking up to Let's Be Social.

Design Wall Monday

What's that on the design wall? 

I have no idea what this is going to be!
These are the parts for the latest step in Kevin's mystery quilt. I'm really enjoying working with some of my old stash plaids and I also love the background fabric that I found in my stash... is says "BAAAA" in a variety of fonts. It makes me smile and that's my favourite kind of fabric.

Here are the pieces we have sewn in the previous steps. All the blocks are different sizes, so it's a true mystery for me how this is all going to fit together in some kind of quilt layout! 
Linking up to Small Quilts and Oh Scrap.

Mystery Quiltalong Addiction

Everyone knows how much I love a mystery quilt! It's next to impossible for me to resist a great mystery. To prove my point, here's a summary of the mystery quilts division of Kathy's Quilts:


1) Temecula's Marvelous Mini Mondays is finished now. All the block patterns have been posted, and the final layout can be seen here. I really enjoyed sewing these tiny blocks and here they are on my design wall. There are supposed to be 20 blocks in the quilt. I don't know why I have 18 blocks, but there you have it! I also have 5 incorrectly made scrappy squares that are too small. You can look for a creative layout that will incorporate all of these blocks...coming "soon".

2) Kevin's mystery quilt called Sapphire Stars, which I am calling Emerald Stars since I am using greens instead of blues. Here are my blocks for that mystery project and a surprise clue was just posted, so that's on the sewing agenda for next week!

3) Blockheads BOW project, which I usually update every week is past the half way point at block # 27 this week.

4) Magnolia Mystery is at the beginning stage and I've just finished cutting all the pieces. The first sewing step has just been posted!

5) Lori over at Humble Quilts is starting a little (20" square) mystery quilt called Palmateer Point. Of course I will start this one too!

How many mystery quilts do you have on the go?!?

Temecula Quiltalong

I got a little behind in the Marvellous Mini Monday quiltalong, so had some catch-up sewing to do.
This is the adorable "half square" block with HSTs that finish at half an inch!!

This mini quiltalong is so fun for crazy quilters like me who love to make blocks with tiny pieces. This is the centre of the churn dash block that fits in the palm of my hand. 



Then we were to sew scrappy 4" patchwork blocks made of 25 tiny squares. 

I thought I was doing well until I put the newly made churn dash block on the design wall with the patchwork blocks and discovered that they were not the right size. Oh no! Perhaps the Best Press spray that I used to flatten the blocks with all those seams resulted in some shrinkage?
Well, I'm not sure what to do about that... maybe try to stretch the 25 patch blocks to fit? I'm definitely not making 5 more! 
Maybe I will be able to cut the other blocks a little smaller to make them all equal?
This is a 12 week quiltalong, and this is week #11 so the layout reveal will be coming soon. So glad that I'm caught up and will be ready to put it all together!

Kevin's Mystery Quilt Update

Are you making the Sapphire Stars mystery quilt that Kevin is hosting? Step #2 has been posted. For this step we need blue, red and yellow strips. But for my version of the quilt I am using green instead of blue, some old red scraps, and some gold yardage instead of yellow. My version is called "Emerald Stars" because I'm sewing with green scraps.


Just look at this pile of old red scraps. There are leftovers here from Celtic Solstice, BeAttitudes, and Journey of a Quilter. It's time for these pieces to get into a quilt. They've been cut up and sewn together and are happy to be part of my Emerald Stars quilt!

Here are my blocks for step #2 all sewn and pressed. Wow that light green is really bright... kind of like a night light!!

I'm waiting "patiently" for step #3 Kevin!

Emerald Stars Step #1

Scrap organization is an ongoing challenge for a busy quilter! I'm always tossing pieces here and there, and trying to figure out how to store scraps so they are actually useable for future projects. What good does it do to keep scraps if they don't actually become finished quilts?!?! 

Well, Kevin the Quilter is helping us out with that challenge! He is hosting a scrappy mystery project called "Sapphire Stars" (step #1 is here). There are lots of tips already posted for scrap organization. 
For this project I am using up green scraps, so my quilt will be called Emerald Stars. The dark corners were leftover from the sashing and backing on the bear quilt, the medium squares are some of my favourite green plaids, and the lights were from the green scrap bin. It's so great to be getting these scraps into a quilt ... thanks Kevin!



The 48 blocks for step #1 were sewn on my white Singer featherweight 221K.  I thought it was the perfect machine for sewing these green blocks since under some lighting the machine appears to have a slight tinge of green. Notice that I'm using up a bobbin of light green thread to piece these blocks. 
Ready for step #2!
Linking up to Oh Scrap!

New Mystery Quilt

I caved to the temptation to start the Meadow Mist Designs mystery quilt called Magnolia Mystery. 
Why?
Because there are only 4 fabrics required and I already have them in my stash! When I read the fabric requirements for this quilt, I could see in my mind's eye the exact fabric I could use from my stash. I have a lot of fabric leftover from my Swoon quilt and this is the perfect project to use it up.

A - yellow (3/8 yd scrappy)
B - grey (3/4 yd yardage)
C - black (5/8 yd yardage)
D - white with black designs (background 4 1/4 yd scrappy)
We won't actually start sewing until August but I have everything ready to go. Thanks to Kate for the enticement to join in the fun!

Marvellous Mini Monday

Are you sewing along with the Temecula summer mystery??
It's only 1 or 2 easy blocks every Monday. Well, there was one week that wasn't easy at all, but all the rest have been easy peasy. 
We've just made these blocks with a tiny 9 patch, a flying geese centre, and a broken dishes centre. These 4" blocks use up all your tiniest scraps, the pieces that "normal" quilters throw in the garbage.

Here are all the blocks I've made for this project so far.
Hop over to Temecula to see what block we're making today, and then hop over to Small Quilts to see more design wall postings. So much quilty goodness to enjoy!

Mystery Quilt Decisions

My version of the mystery quilt called "Ghosts and Mosts" is ready for borders. This was the Super Bowl Sunday mystery quilt hosted by Quiltbug. I liked the pattern and wanted to make it bigger to fit the guidelines to donate it to my guild's comfort quilt project. The pattern is for a baby quilt of 4 rows (16 blocks) and I wanted to make a lap quilt. I decided to add 2 more rows which meant making 8 more blocks. I also added a sashing with blue cornerstones, which made it a little bigger.

I was really scrounging to get enough of the gold fabrics for the last 8 blocks. Look at these sections which were pieced together from scraps.
I'm trying to decide about a narrow dark red border with or without cornerstones, and/or adding a blue border. There is also another dark red border to add. In days gone by, this decision making process would have taken a long time. And if the "right" answer did not present itself, the whole thing would go to the UFO closet.

Good enough!

Not anymore! A decision will be made quickly because:
a) this is one of those quilts where I already know how I want to quilt it, so I am motivated to get it to the quilting stage, and
 b) I have learned there is not one "right" way to do anything, but there are many "good enough" solutions!
Hop over to Lorna's Let's Be Social linky party and see what other quilters are working on today.

Super Sewl Design Wall

For a few years now I have hosted a Superbowl Sewing party, which I call the Super Sewl party! You can see some of the mystery quilt tops we have made over the years:  2016 party, 2015 party, and 2014 party.    It is forbidden to ask any of us if these previous mystery projects are finished quilts, or if they are still quilt tops in the UFO closet! All of these mystery quilt patterns have been generously provided by Quiltbug and this year was no exception. We are a group of avid mystery quilters and we enjoy the surprise of not knowing what we are sewing when we gather our fabrics. In truth, we really don't care how the projects turn out... we enjoy the day of visiting and sewing, and hiding from the football fans!


Here are the fabrics I collected for the mystery. They are washed and ready for the cutting and sewing to commence. 

Here is my project at the end of the day. The pattern is called "Ghosts and Mosts" and the steps can be found here. I think I will make 2 more rows to add to the bottom to make it a larger quilt if I have enough fabric to do so.
We are thankful to the wonderful folks at Quiltbug who have given us these wonderful mystery patterns to sew!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday Mystery

The final step of Scrap Dance Tango has been revealed! This is a mystery quilt from Carole who blogs at From My Carolina Home. I couldn't resist putting my blocks on the design wall and playing with different layout ideas.

Layout A

Layout B

Layout C

Do you have a preference of any of these layouts? I like them all and really don't like one more than the others. But I still have many more blocks to make, so I have lots of time to decide.
The project started in January, and I have made a bazillion scrappy HST's for this quilt since then. Seriously, it has been a never-ending task!
The BlocLoc ruler has made the trimming of the blocks much easier. Although it was a more expensive ruler to purchase, I have used it so much this year that I believe it is definitely worth the money. 

Check your sister's house!

The only problem is that the ruler is so popular, my sister sometimes steals borrows it to trim her HST blocks, which leaves me using the regular old fashion way of trimming. I think I will end up buying her one of her own!

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday

No the scrap vortex is not on the wall again today! It's still in surgery.
On the design wall today are 25 of the 44 blocks I've sewn for the Scrap Dance Tango mystery quilt.

They are not in any particular order... just randomly placed on the wall for a photo. It's a lot of red and green. I think I need to add more blue and purple so it doesn't look so much like a Christmas quilt. 

To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.