Happy New Year Mystery Quilt!

BJ and I sewed along with over one hundred other quilters in nine different countries to make the online NYE Mystery Quilt today. It was her first and I think my fourth for this event but the first time I have had company [other than Button dog] for the project and it's much more fun to have a quilty friend to share the day!

This is BJ hard at work.........

and here's a sample of her blocks. BJ is ambitious, making a queen size version.

My blocks..........

and 16 of them sewn together. Having more fabric I made another row of blocks, in the pic. above it's only 48" square. There is still enough left for three small borders making a nice lap size quilt and using up just about all of these fabrics. I have no idea about backing at this point.

BJ and I are both quite pleased with our fabric choices and the results of our labors today. Time goes by easily as we sew and press and trim and chat, stopping only for caloric sustenance, a bowl of potato soup and some beer bread!

For Phoenix it has been bitterly cold this week, a good time to stay cozy indoors and sew and eat soup!

Happy New Year to all and a healthy and successful 2011- for quilters may all your tops become quilts!

Till next year................

NYE Mystery Quilt Top

These really pretty fabrics taught me a hard lesson-no matter how gorgeous I think it is I will not buy fabric if it is stiff. Maybe it's all the gold metallic on them - one is a batik but it is actually softer! There are still a lot of these African theme fabrics in my stash so I am now wondering how to use them, perhaps as backings, because it really makes my fingers sore from all the pinning.

As you can see I used those indipensible little fork pins again, without them I would have been undoing and re-sewing a lot of the seams that didn't match up well enough to satisfy me.

Incidentally, I found the fork pins at Joann today and on sale 50% off so I picked up an extra package. This made them much less expensive than at Connecting Threads even at CT's sale price, and then you have to add shipping though I only order the pins if I am already placing an order for something else.

Ta-da, here is the finished top ready for the longarm. After hanging it for photographing I noticed a mistake, but it's going to stay there! The elephants at least all go in the same direction, that was in my plan but I wouldn't have fussed if it didn't work out. As time goes on I find myself able to live with some things that are less than perfect, others I can't abide it depends on how much it offends my eyes!

New year's Eve Mystery Quilt

QT Mystery Quilts is hosting a NYE project- the past two years I have joined a NYE Mystery and this year will be quilting along with three local quilter friends. We will be working together on the mystery quilt all NYE day and I am using only stash fabrics as in the past two years.
There is quite a collection of African theme fabrics untouched to date in the stash so I pulled them out to try and find a nice arrangement of two mediums, a dark, a light, a focus and a border fabric.

This was the first idea - left to right, far left is the light, the next two are the mediums, the orange is the focus and the last on the right is the dark.

The mediums give me some concern for two reasons.
1-The large gold print will get lost when cut up into small pieces
2-The two golds are fairly close in value and may not have enough contrast

Here is a brown to replace the large-print gold that will then work perfectly for the border.
This looks like the better alternative, the brown print is rather geometric but it will do, it doesn't matter to me if it goes in different directions, makes the design more interesting. Tell me what you think if you have an opinion-most of us quilters do, LOL!

It's good to be able to use some of this ethnic collection and I am determined not to buy for the project, I want to use stash in order to rotate older fabrics out of stash to make room for new ones! Taking into consideration fabric purchases for this year-around 100 yards-the stash so far has decreased by about 50 yards, but my goal is more ambitious for the coming year. The"fabric out" total could conceivably increase by 40 yards or so if the four projects in progress were all done by year's end! Not likely that will happen but I might get one or two done. Stay tuned!


Christmas Day I made cinnamon buns- did the prep. Christmas Eve so they only had to be baked on Christmas Day. Sons #1 and #4 and their families met up with DH and me at the home of son #2 to eat, visit and open gifts. Youngest DGS is missing from the group pic, he was napping, but here is the little cutie with his "Docband "helmet, he has to wear it 23 hours/day for about seven months. You can see his Mum and Dad have decorated it with their favorite team colors, go Cowboys! Baby Matthew is 8 months old.

Below is a pic of his Daddy at about the same age, wearing one of DH's flight helmets, think these two are related?!


Then our "boys" went off to visit the other side of their families and DH and I came home for a quiet evening.
The Shakespeare quilt was calling to me and a spot of mindless sewing, more scrappy pot holders put together from border blocks left over from the strip scrap quilt.

The backs are larger scrap pieces enlivened by the selvedge bindings.

This week these two numbers were drawn from the VTT comments.

JoJo's and Keetha's vintage aprons and scrappy pot holders will be in the mail to them probably Monday.
There will be one more drawing next week after VTT.

Another flimsie!

My New Year's Eve Mystery quilt top is ready to go on the LA, maybe tomorrow. I laid it out on the bed & it certainly is um.......... cheerful! The focus fabric was on sale after Christmas 75% off at one of my favorite quilt shops, Bernina Connection, it was too good a deal & someone will love it- won't they? It sort of looks a little retro to me.
I will probably quilt an over-all flowery thing, I have enough of the focus print for backing & binding & all of it came from stash, woohoo. With any luck I can get another UFO off the list this week. Then I must get back to putting together the blocks for the Double Delight Mystery, all I lack are the setting triangles & borders.
No news on the baby front, baby Matthew is still hanging out comfy as can be in Mumma's tummy! Can't say the same for poor little Mumma Madeleine, she is decidedly uncomfortable at this stage!
Tomorrow will be fun I am meeting LA'er friend Debbie at Quiltz to choose fabric for a B&W quilt for her DIL then we will have lunch. I don't often get the opportunity to hang out with my friends so I do treasure those times.
Debbie too has an awesome little Aussie Terrier named Lucy-Lucy is a bird dog, LOL, she likes to catch birds but is more successful at it than Button, or maybe they have more birds in their large fruit tree laden yard! Her owners feel badly about the unfortunate birds, & Debbie said that while we have a nice dog they have Lizzie Borden!! I'm not so sure I would put it like that because Button can charm the birds out of the trees, but then she likes to make a "between meal snack" of them!  Like all "Aussies", Button will chase anything that moves & if she catches it & it's edible then, well, it's edible,LOL [unless we catch her in time].

Here she is on the squirrel hunt in the log pile in CO.last week, "I know that dratted rodent is here I saw it run under the logs, I can smell it...." this was during a big spring snowstorm.

"Now where did it go......?"

Sigh.....what are you gonna do, it's simply the laws of nature!

PS. Pat emailed me that the Koala quilt came today, so now I have an extra Gari, what was your address again?!