Mystery Monday Link Up

What a great day it was yesterday. Well, yes it was extremely cold outside and probably even snowing but I didn’t have to go anywhere but my sewing machine. And, extra bonus, QuiltCam !
I was feeling so enthusiastic I even tried to send a picture of my sewing set up to Bonnie. However technology failed ( a much too tedious tale to tell).  So sharing it now

I was trying to get a whole bunch of blocks done so I could check the layout. Managed one and three quarters of a second.
Well, still tried the layout with what I have already done.
This is a knock-out. Totally stupendous. And complicated. Definitely need to pay attention to what goes where.

What I wanted to check most of all was the scrappy sashing. I wasn’t sure if changing from a constant in the blocks to scrappy in the sashing would work out. But also not sure if I have enough of the constant to do all the sashing and the blocks. Thought since I had a really long length of this fabric it would be sufficient however, it didn’t have the width. Instead of 42 inches or even 40, this was only 35.

A closer look with better colour, picture from my camera instead of my tablet. I think this will work.
 Now to just get all the pieces finished.  A whole lot of sashing left to sew.
Did get all the setting pieces cut, so I can put all the blue away. A few more brown HST and QST to cut so that is still out.  And so glad I bought the Folded Corners ruler, made this last step go fast.


So now just sewing ahead but first to link up with Bonnie.Mystery Monday Link Up

First Week of BOM challenge

YAH ! It’s here. The first week of the challenge and I feel ready to dive in.
First of all, I have to pick a pattern from the 18 left to make. To keep myself from over thinking this, I just open the case and grab one without looking at it. Going totally random here, and what do I get? Flying Geese ! As if I haven’t done a couple hundred of them over the past weeks of Bonnie’s Mystery. Booyah.   Even better, these are 2.5inch geese, yowser, they seem huge.

The next step is to choose the fabrics.  When I started this, I didn’t want to use the same red all the way through, so I have used two different ones already. And now that I’ve been ordering from Quilted Twins, I have even more choice. I picked up one of their bundles of red back in November.  Just head on over to the shelf, shove my hand in the stack of red and pull one out.  Keeping it random.
The white isn’t so random. The designer said she chose flying geese as a memory of fall in Southern Ontario when the geese flock to fly south.  So I pull a white/on white with small flowers that resemble the fall asters.
And off to the cutting table
A slight hiccup is encountered.

The centre block has the option of some embroidery, the years of the sesquicentennial. ( isn’t that a mouthful but faster than saying 150th birthday) . I trace the numbers with a chalk pencil and hunt up some embroidery supplies.


And that’s where all this progress came to a screeching halt. Three hours later, I surfaced to write this.  Finding the floss and needles didn’t take all that much time. It was sidetracking on cutting for other projects, patching a hole in hubby’s quilted shirt, straightening up shelves that were avalanching fabric all over. And  so on.  But I have the pieces ready to sew and I am now sitting close to a sewing machine. This could happen.
but first to link up with Jo, because this is her idea after all. Jo's BOM Challenge

String Update

I started to write this yesterday to link up with Jo and then realized that I had made very little progress on my string projects. So I held off until I could report something. Last night I had only 5 new kites/units/ 1/4 blocks, whatever they are called,finished. Today I have my weekly allotment of 11done and the 11 new pieces cut for the upcoming week.



Since I had over 40 of these units done, I decided to put some blocks together to make sure I liked the outcome.





Yes, yes I like it. The light in this room doesn't do this justice. Will have to take a better one in daylight.  With only 4 or 5 strips on each side of the kite, they go fast so it should be quick work to get a whole bunch more made.  The only thing slowing me down is all the other projects demanding some attention right now.

I started cutting and sewing on the bar mitzvah quilt and oh didn’t I mention? My hubby requested another present for a cousin.  The last time I gave the Orange Crush I had in the UFO pile, the time before that I did a Bricks and Stepping Stones. The Bricks and Stepping Stones is faster to do from a cold start ( uncut fabric) so that’s what I’m going with.  A dash over to Joanns provided some current novelty fabric and I have been slicing away at it. Only 30 more bricks to cut.  But first while I have a sitting down break from cutting, off to link up with Jo

UFO Challenge update

Oh my, I went down to get some pictures of the progress and totally lost the rest of the day.
I haven’t been sewing downstairs much this week but I did get a good chunk of my UFO project together.
This was a mystery quilt and I am now working on clue 8 of 9. And that means pieces are starting to look like something. The little nine patches and strip pieces are going together to make big blocks.

Please excuse the streak of sunshine. The time of day I like to work in my basement sewing room is mid-afternoon when the sun is shinning in my window. It makes the cutting easier but messes up the photos.
There are still a lot of pieces to go. However this assembly requires precision, with careful placement of blocks, so I only work on it when I have a big chunk of uninterrupted time.
Which hasn’t been that frequent. Mostly I've been running down to cut more pieces to then bring up to the sewing machine in my bedroom.
Slowly it will get done, it has been waiting for two years, a few more days is nothing.  Now to link up with Jo's UFO challenge

A new challenge !

And challenge accepted.
Jo has issued a challenge to finish a sampler/BOM project and do I have one? Yes I do. Not very old, it is a BOM for 2017 which was Canada’s 150th birthday. Several quilting projects were inspired by that occasion, fortunately I only signed up for one.
As you can see from the glare, they are mostly all still in their packages. Untouched. Except for the first month which I did do. And as Jo said on her post, the process of all that work for only one block seemed a waste of time and effort.

This was an on-line signup, and they had my credit card to bill every month.  So even after I gave up on it, the patterns kept coming. I didn’t have to go anywhere, they came to me, every month, two of them a month. It became overwhelming after the second month and I just shoved them away, a couple not even opening the paper envelope they came in.
I felt guilty because I was paying for them and not using them but had too many other things on the go to tackle the backlog.
I did get the first months blocks done.

So I’m not completely behind. LOL.
Now with Jo’s help I will get this done.
The first step is admitting the problem right? The first step here is to link up with Jo's Challenge because she always gets me moving on a project. Almost as good as a boot in the rear. EDIT: oops, it wasn't a link-up today, just a start up post.

The second step was getting them all out and in a project box. Now to go pick a fabric for the next month's block.

 

Ringo Lake Mystery Link Up

I feel very confident writing this week. Lots of progress was made on all the clues. Clue 2 is almost done.  It could have been checked off however I came up 2 pieces short. This could just be that a couple of the stacks clipped together have more than 10.  Rather than go through and recount them all, I figured it was simplier to cut and sew two more. And cleaning off the cutting board I found one, so only had to make one more.
I also am feeling more confident because I have the clues all organized, sorted and tabulated. Doing that makes me more relaxed. In my old sewing room, in my  previous house, I had a white board stuck on the wall over my cutting table where I tracked the clues and could see at a glance what needed to be cut, sewn or was done.  That didn’t come with us and I have been missing it.  Fortunately when my husband was cleaning out his cubical at the office prior to retiring last month, he brought home an easel pad.
While it doesn’t provide the wipe-off ability of the white board, it does give me a place to chart what is going on in the mystery.(When taking the picture I put a piece of white paper over the numbers since we’re not supposed to be sharing them.)
Then as a second step to organizing, I assembled the pieces for each clue on their own paper plate.
This is way easier to carry them upstairs all intact to the machine to work on and back down to the cutting room to replenish when I run out of pieces. Which I have done. Several days of intense sewing has depleted the cut browns and I need to resupply.
But before I do that (since the chances of me resurfacing for several hours after going to the downstairs room are 1. slim, 2. none) time to write this and link up with Bonnie and the other mystery quilters.  How did you do this week?

String Link Up

Linking up with Jo's Country Junction to share progress on my string projects.
I got so many of the Spider Web pieces done I had to go cut another batch. Yay. Plus during the drive to my In Laws today I de-papered the finished pieces. As an attempt to do it as I go, rather than have the whole bunch to do at the end.

 
I also finished a whole stack of the neutral blocks and de-papered a bunch while we were sitting around the fireplace chit-chatting. However the stack I had just finished still needs to be trimmed, the de-papering was catch up with ones already done weeks ago.

At the same time as I was working on these, pieces of the new mystery passed through the machine but I will do a separate post on them tomorrow.

We are mid-calf deep in snow and looking very picturesque. Fortunately the roads are well cleared and our trip in the in-laws was easy. Things are very relaxed and low-key here as our celebration has already finished and my husband even started putting away decorations today. He does the train, it needs to have the batteries removed for the year long storage.
I hope everyone’s celebrations are as stress-free and joyous as it has been here.