The Never Ending Quilt

I feel like my Mystery Quilt is just never ending. I was able to get a little sewing in today. I need to sew together all the pieces I have sewn together.

I got 10 of these blocks sewn together...I need 60.

I got 5 of these sewn and need 61. Oy Vey.

Here is my design wall with the 15 blocks sewn. Remember once I get all 121 blocks sewn together then they need to be sewn to each other.

I like the look of this quilt but I will say making a King Size Quilt is a ton of work and I am sure that I would only make this for myself. I do enjoy giving away my quilts but not this one.

Now I need to get settled to watch the opening of the Olympics and get to knitting on my sweater. I would be wonderful if I got to wear it for St. Patrick's Day!  Oh, and don't be shocked but I have my next sweater picked out already. It too will be a many year project I am sure. That really doesn't bother me because the things I chose to make are not inexpensive, it would be cheaper to purchase these items but I get way more hours of pleasure than I would just buying something.

Mystery Quilt SOLVED

Happy New Year!

I have been working on my Mystery Quilt clues but I got so very far behind with my ankle injury that I was hoping to catch up this week. But today the final clue came out and I just love what the quilt will look like when finished.  But first I need to iron the all the pinwheel blocks.

I need to sew 200 4 patches.

I already have 100 of them sewn together.

Then I need to complete 244 of these blocks. Adding a blue triangle onto them as well. (whew, I'm already tired just writing about all that needs done.)

Here are some of the other blocks I have sewn together.

 Encase you were wondering, when the quilt is all done it will have more than 5,187 pieces. WOW that is an amazing amount of pieces. I really would not have made this quilt on my own if I had looked at that number in advance.

I was not sure I would like the colors when we were told what colors to pull from our stash. Several people decided to go with their own color choices but I decided that I would trust the designer as I love almost everything she does and the only way to grow is to move out of your comfort zone. To be honest even yesterday I was still wondering if I was going to like this quilt or not. I planned this one to be on our bed so I just kept moving along and telling myself to trust the process.

Well at midnight the final clue was revealed and here it is. I just put a few blocks up on my design wall. And you know what...I love it. I am so happy I went the way of the designer.

Now to finish this beast. My plan is to have this all done and on the bed by the end of January.  Fingers crossed!

Mystery Quilt Weeks 3 and 4

I am so far behind on my Mystery Quilt. Clue #5 came out today and I still have to finish 3 and 4.

I got all the cutting done in 2 days last week. With my ankle I can't stand more than a 2 hours without feeling it the rest of the day.  All this cutting took about 5 hours.  WOW!!

 Clue # 3 was cutting out 488 pairs of triangles and sewing them together. Each of these piles is 50 triangles. It takes time to sew them and press them open.

They are just 2".

  Here is all of them sewn together in stacks of 10. Then I needed to put 244 of them aside and make 61 pinwheel blocks from the rest of the half square blocks.

I still have 59 of these bad boys to sew together.

Clue #4 is sewing 4 patch blocks. This is somewhat easier as I am sewing 10.5" strips of green and orange together first. (Remember I am going for a scrappy look so the more combinations the better.)

These strips need to be 3.5" when sewn and pressed.

Now I need to cut these strips up and sew them back together into 4 patches. I need 300 of these guys. Time to get to sewing! I hope by next Thursday I can show you Clues 3-5 done. Wishful thinking I know.

Mystery Quilt Clue #2 part 2

The other day I showed you a picture of all my pieces that were cut for Clue #2, here's a reminder....

Before I could sew a stitch I needed to draw a diagonal line on the back of each of the neutral and yellow 2" squares. For the record... that was 976 little squares.

Here is what I have left to sew....

The chevron blocks in the lower left are the finished blocks. In this photo I had 20 done. That's a ton of sewing, trimming, ironing. This is why we get a whole week to sew up our clues. We need the whole week.

Just for the record so far I have CUT 2,604 pieces of fabric that have been sewn (or will be sewn) into 624 3" finished blocks. And I am not even half way done.

Mystery Quilt Clue #2

Today I spent hour after hour cutting fabric for clue #2 on the mystery quilt Celtic Solstice. I needed to cut 488 2" squares from my neutral fabric, 488 2" squares from my yellow fabric, and 2"x 3.5" rectangles from my green fabrics. So what does that look like...

I now need to sew all of these together. Each green piece with get a neutral and a yellow sewn to it. I will post pictures tomorrow when I get those done.

Last night I was able to get some knitting done on a Barn Raising square.

I hope to get this one finished up tonight and begin another one as my goal this month is to get 2 knit up this month. I have 20 finished and would like to have 60 for a nice lap size blanket. No matter what the temperature I always have a blanket on my lap. I even take one with me in the car if I am not driving. I cannot stand a breeze blowing on me. Okay, if its 85 degrees and sunny I don't mind so much but lower than that and I'm a baby.

The Making of a Block

Yesterday I wrote about starting the mystery quilt Celtic Solstice. In week 1 I need to sew 380 triangles in a square blocks. These blocks are 3 1/2" square. I thought that today I would go over what it takes to make one of these blocks.

Yesterday I mentioned how much this quilt would cost in materials however I failed to mentioned that most of this quilt is being made with fabric that I had in my stash and my sister M bought some for me when we went on our shopping spree.

First of course is cutting out the fabric. I have chosen to make a "scrappy" quilt, meaning that I am using as many fabrics as I could find in the colorway I chose.

So this block consists of one center triangle and 2 side triangles.  Notice how the top of the center orange triangle is chopped off, this is something we do a lot in quilting as you don't need that little bit at the top, it would just be in the way.

Here I am just showing you the right triangle along with the center.

Next I will place the right triangle right side together with the orange and line up the edges. Notice that bottom right corner of the blue looks short...its not really, its cut that way to line up the 2 fabrics so that when its sewn and ironed it will be all lined up and happy.

Now comes the sewing. In quilting we use a 1/4" seam allowance. I chain piece these in batches of twenty-five or so. This gives me breaks where then I have to get up to press.

To keep my seam allowance accurate when I am sewing large numbers (I kind of zone out sometimes) I stack a bunch of post it notes 1/4" away from my needle so that the fabric just buts up against it and glides right through my machine.

Now I take my pieces over to my ironing table and "set" the seam by just pressing the seam while it is closed. Why? It helps the thread to lie nice in the seam and not be to bulky. I know it is just a tiny thread but when I am sewing several pieces together the less bulk the better.

Now I open the piece up and press, being careful not to stretch the fabric out of shape.

  Stack of pressed pieces. Back to the sewing machine.

 Next we need to sew on the left side. Its the same procedure as the right side.

All sewn and pressed.

Every so often I measure a block for quality assurance to see that it measures 3 1/2".

Now I need to trim all the little bits that hang over the block, as quilters we call these "dogears".

I finished all the orange and blue squares, all 140 of them. Not I just need to sew the 240 neutral ones.
Whew!!

Celtic Solstice Mystery Quilt

This year I participating in a Mystery Quilt. A famous quilter named Bonnie Hunter offers up this mystery every year as a thank you to her blog readers. This year the quilt is called Celtic Solstice after her recent trip to Ireland. The colors for this quilt are blue, orange, green, yellow and a neutral.

Let me just take a minute to talk about what a quilt costs to make. This quilt requires 4.5 yards of blue fabric, 4.25 of orange, 4 of green, 3 of yellow and 4 of neutral. All this adds up to  19.75 yards of fabric. I chose to use lots of different fabrics within a color range which is makes for a scrappy quilt. Good quality cotton fabric costs about $12.00 a yard so for 19.75 yards = $237.00. This is just for the top of the quilt I will still need to purchase fabric for the back of the quilt as well as the batting. When all is said and done I will have spent close to $400.00. What I want to add is that this is a king size quilt and it will take me approximately 10 weeks to complete start to finish so that is $40.00 per week of entertainment for me and at the end I will have a quilt that I made and will sleep under. Seems totally worth it to me.( Keep in mind that $400 does not include my labor.)

Here is my basket of fabric!

Friday I recieved the first clue for the mystery. I needed to cut 140 orange triangles, 240 neutral triangles, and 380 pairs of blue side triangles.

First I cut a 3.5" strip of fabric then I cut the triangle shapes using a special ruler.

  2 hours later I have all my orange triangles cut. Whew! ( I will cut the neutrals another time.)

 Next I needed to cut all the blue side triangles. This took another 2 hours to cut 380 PAIRS. That's alot! This is what just the orange and blue look like.

Now I can begin sewing these together.

One down 139 more orange triangles to go (plus the 240 neutrals)!

Here is a sampling of a few I got done.