Easy Street Mystery Part 3

I'm happy to tell you that I've finished my Shaded 4-patches for clue #3 of Easy Street. I'm still behind on my first two steps, but I've made some more progress this week; more on that in a bit.

I pulled out 13 different reds from my stash to use in place of Bonnie's turquoise. I have more red fabric than these, but some had too much white, some were too dark, and some I just plain didn't like anymore (what possessed me to buy that one?).

I don't think that I've mentioned before that I'm not doing the full quilt as Bonnie Hunter has designed it. Hers will finish at 84 X 84 (or 96 X 96 with the optional border). I want to make this a lap quilt, so that's too big. Her suggestion was to make half the blocks if you want a smaller quilt, but that sounds too small to me. So I'm making 75% of the blocks. I think that will be a better size for my purposes, but I can always make more if I need to.

I made 48 Shaded 4-patches. I absolutely LOVE how the colors in the block look together. Of course, add red to anything and I'll probably love it :)

After making my first flying geese block last week, I decided to use the same background fabric for both of the "wing" triangles in each block. I did the same for these blocks.

I apologize for the quality of these photos. It was already getting dark outside when I got home from work today, so I couldn't use natural sunlight for the pictures.

Progress Report

Clue #1, 4-patches: 64 out of 144 completed

I'm using these as my leaders/enders, so I'm slowly accumulating a big pile of these.

Clue #2, Flying Geese: 14 out of 96 completed

I will be using different fabrics for the "wings," but I've only had time to use the green polka-dots. I'm following Bonnie's suggestion: if you're not done with the current step on Friday, stop that and do the new step. That way you've at least started each step and you know what's going on. I'm hoping to get at least a few more flying geese made this week before Friday.

Clue #3, Shaded 4-patches: 48 out of 48 completed

I'm linking up to Quiltville's Easy Street and Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Happy stitching!

December Daily Day 8

I don't always have time to post my December Daily page, but I actually got day 8 done last night, so I thought I'd show it to you. For my daughter's Honors English class, she had to get with a group of students and do community service. Some of her friends are in band, so they played Christmas carols for the Salvation Army. Since my daughter isn't in band, she rang sleigh bells.

Ever since I started doing December Daily in 2008, I've used the 8 X 8 inch red binders from We R Memory Keepers. Most of my pages are digital, and I print them at home on letter-sized photo paper and trim to size.

For this page, I resized one of Ali Edwards' 12 X 12 templates (from her December Daily Volume 2 set), then I rotated it to better fit the orientation of my photos. I also resized Ali's 2012 December Daily Overlay and rotated it. The digital papers are from Katie Pertiet's "Fa La La" paper pack. All digital elements are from Designer Digitals.

I'm linking up to Ali Edwards' December Daily - Day 8 post. Go check out all the great inspiration.

Happy scrapbooking!

December First Friday UFO

Happy First Friday of December! Can you believe 2012 is almost at its end?

This is the block I made in November for my All Stars UFO quilt. The block will finish at 12" square. For the center, I used a pattern from the August 2001 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. This was one of the borders in a quilt called "Working my Way Around," designed by Jill Reber.

To see all the blocks I've made for this quilt so far, click the "All Star quilt" label at the end of this post.

I'm off to work on clue 3 of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, Easy Street.

Happy stitching!

Two Mystery Quilts

This week I've been working on two different mystery quilts:

American Patchwork & Quilting Mystery Quilt

This weekend, my husband took our two sons to a city about 5 hours away to go to an NFL game. His parents, his brother, and brother's wife and two sons met them there. They had a great time, and my daughter and I, who don't really like football, shared a quiet weekend at home (no football games on TV, no arguing over who gets to use the family computer...) While they were gone, I sewed the middle and outer border onto this quilt. (The patterns for all the blocks, the setting, and the borders have been featured in all the 2012 issues of the AP&Q magazine.)

With a blog called "Crazy for Red," I'm sure you're not surprised that I pulled more red into this quilt with the outer border! I had my hubby hold up the quilt for this photo; you can just barely see a bit of his white sock under the quilt top.

I'm very excited to have this quilt top finished! I will probably wait until Christmas Break to do the quilting.


 Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street Mystery Quilt

Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville is on week 2 of her mystery quilt, Easy Street. Instead of Bonnie's purple, I'm using gold fabrics. These are most of the golds I'm using for this quilt. The top three in the photo all have stars, although they're different sizes.

Saturday, I realized that I don't have any green-on-white fabrics, so I headed off to a nearby quilt shop. Lucky me, they were having an anniversary sale, and all Christmas fabrics were 20% off. I probably didn't need any more gold fabrics, but I couldn't resist the gold snowflakes. The green polka-dot fabric wasn't Christmas, but it totally works for me. The multi-colored polka-dot fabric was another Christmas one. That bottom fabric is actually for Saint Patrick's Day!

Here's a larger photo of the St. Patrick's Day fabric. I couldn't resist this green and gold on white. I figured that, after I cut the fabric into 2" strips, and then the smaller units, I should be able to use most of it in my Christmas-themed Easy Street quilt. Some of the smaller shamrocks may need to be set aside for another project.

 I've got 30 four-patches sewn so far. I'm using these for my leaders-enders.

I've only got this one flying goose patch sewn so far. (I had trouble getting a good shot without a shadow, so it looks quite wonky. But trust me, it is a good rectangle in real life!!!)

And that's all I've got so far. Be sure to go check out some of the great projects at Patchwork Times and see other quilters' versions of Easy Street at Quiltville.

Happy stitching!

Easy Street Mystery #1

Apparently I'm the last quilter on earth who hasn't heard of Bonnie K. Hunter's mystery quilts over at Quiltville! I just saw some posts about it on Monday, when I was looking at linky parties. After looking at the Quiltville blog, I decided to jump in, even though the mystery started last Friday. (Because I need another project like I need a hole in my head...LOL).

Although I love the colors Bonnie is using, I really don't have a lot of fabrics in those colors in my stash. What I do have a lot of is Christmas, Christmas, and more Christmas fabrics! So I'm going to make my Easy Street quilt with those. In place of Bonnie's lime, teal, and purple, I'll be using red, green, and gold fabrics. (I haven't had a chance to pull those out yet for a picture.)

Instead of Bonnie's gray, I'll be using several white-on-white fabrics.You can see some of them here. There are snowflakes, Santas, angels, Christmas trees, etc. A few of these are not Christmas-specific white-on-whites.

For my "background" fabrics, instead of using black on white, I'm using red on white, red and green on white, and green on white (well, I still need to go buy some green on white fabric...). I know these choices will change the overall look of the quilt, but that's part of the fun of making a mystery quilt, right?

Last night I cut several strips of fabric for step one, so now I've got lots of sewing to do. I hope to get caught up, but I don't know if that's realistic for this time of year, especially since I'll also be doing "December Daily" again with Ali Edwards. It's a daily scrapbooking project that I've done for the past three years.

I'm linking up to Quiltville's Easy Street Link Up #1.

Happy stitching!

AP&Q Mystery Quilt Border 1

Over the long weekend, besides piecing my November CQJP block, I was able to do more work on my American Patchwork and Quilting Mystery Quilt. I got the blocks in the center all sewn together with the setting triangles.

Then I finished piecing the first border and attached that to the center.

It's getting so big that it's harder to take a photo of it :) For this last photo, I put it on the floor and stood on the sofa to get far enough away so that the whole quilt would be in the frame! Unfortunately, it's getting dark so early these days that there wasn't much sunlight when I got home from work today, so the pics are a bit dark.

Now I just have the two other borders, neither of which is pieced. I might actually finish a quilt the same year I started it!!!

I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday, Linky Party Tuesday at Freemotion by the River, and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

Happy stitching!

November CQJP block pieced

I started piecing my November block for CQJP a few weeks ago and finished it this weekend. I will embroider the name of my city and state in the arc of the fan. I traced the words using a fine black marker, like I did for my kids' names and birthdays on their blocks. Then the embroidery will be in black floss. I've blurred out that part for privacy, which is why it has that black marbled-look. The fabric is actually a cream dupioni silk. You can see what it looks like over on the left side of the block.

I've been taking advantage of having extra time off work (or am I just procrastinating doing Christmas stuff? LOL). I'm off to go work some more on my AP&Q Mystery Quilt...

Happy stitching!