It's New Year's eve. I've been sitting here thinking about all of the things I didn't get done in 2014 and some of the things I would like to do in 2015.  For some reason it's always easier for me to see what I haven't finished then the things I did finish.

Some of the quilt projects I've started and would like to get done are:

Jesse's Orange Quilt

This quilt will be awesome when I get it done!  It's next on my list for quilting.  I'm hoping to get it pinned in the next few days.  After all I can't make an orange one for me until I finish the first one.

Checked Alphabet Quilt

Last weekend I got the sashing done on this one.  Now I'm pondering the borders.  I've got several different ideas and will have to choose just one before I can move forward.  I really dislike making up my own borders.  I'm not good at figuring out the math.  I have several books but apparently, not the right book.  Yet!

5th Clue for Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt

I have made each of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt (tops) for the last four years.  The only one I've quilted and finished is Roll Roll Cotton Bole.  It is one of my favorite quilts.  Maybe this years quilt will get finished too.

Roll Roll Cotton Bole finished in 2011

I'm planning to get some of my tops quilted this coming year!  It's hard to enjoy something you can only see draped over a quilt rack.

Smith Mountain Morning a Bonnie Hunter design

Red, White & Blue Stars

The red, white and blue stars top is done.  And it doesn't look much like that.  It seems that I never posted a picture of the completed top.  As I was going through the old tops the ones I picked out to get to the quilting on are ones for ME.  We'll see how far I get with that.

Have a safe and happy New Year's eve and New Year.

Happy Sewing,

Julie

Back to work! It's Monday.  Christmas week is over. I about put the word "finally" in that sentence.  But I realized that I don't really feel that way.  That the week is - finally over.  Yes, no doubt, it was a busy week.  But it was a good week.  I was able to spend a lot of time with family and that was great.  I also got some of my sewing projects done and wrapped in time for Christmas morning.

Bag Front

Bag Back

 

Lining and Pocket

This is the bag I made for DIL Victoria. I love the way it turned out.  The daisy pattern is from Esch House Quilts.  It was not too bad for my first bias strip project.  It was more difficult to decide how I wanted to put the bag together.  I didn't have a pattern and was having a hard time remembering how I had made one before.  This time I wrote it down.  The bag measures approx. 16" x 16".  The sides and bottom are 3" wide.

I also made two pairs of pajama pants for DD Jennifer.

Pajama Pants

One pair of the pj's has been done for weeks.  The other was waiting for elastic and hems. It's so easy for me to put that stuff off.  So I did.  Right up until December 23rd.

Another thing I had put off was finishing the binding on my version of the Quiltmaker sew-along quilt.

First Take

I called my version "First Take" since it was a sample I sewed before cutting into the Quiltmaker fabric.  Both quilts turned out great!  This one had been waiting for about 3' of binding to be stitched down since September. 

Those are my finished for December.  I also worked on a couple of other things but I'll save those for another day.

And since this is my blog and I like to go back and read things months and months later, I'll put a couple of pictures of Christmas on here.  That way I can smile over them in July.

Jesse and Allison 

Zach (barely), Jennifer and Grace (handing out presents)

Victoria and I are mom's.  We don't often end up in the pictures.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Happy Monday!

Julie

This weekend I was able to finish Step 4 of Bonnie Hunters Grand Illusion mystery quilt.  This one went fairly quick for me.  I had most of the 2 1/2" strips cut that I needed.  And we had already made one of the corners we needed for each unit.

Step 4

These are the steps all together.

Step 1 - 4

I am a bit surprised that I've been keeping up with this.  That and doing a bit of other sewing too.

This is what I started on Sunday morning.  I'm hoping that it looks like a daisy.  It's supposed to.

The colors on the picture above are a terrible representation of the true colors.  These are Kona fabrics - the dark blue and the white is called "snow". 

This picture shows a better representation of the colors but also shows how messy my center was before I trimmed it.  This is my first project making the bias strips.  So far so good.  I may take the time to rip out the center spiral quilting.  I should have done it with my free motion foot instead of the walking foot.  It's pretty rough.  It might also have helped if I had drawn it on there instead of doing it freehand.  This is a free pattern given on Esch House Quilts.  Her directions are pretty clear.  I did watch a couple of YouTube videos on how to make the bias strips.  And luckily I had bought a tool years ago that I was able to actually lay my hands on at the right time.  The outcome of this project is still undetermined.  The original given with the pattern is a pillow cover.  I'm thinking bag. 

Have a great Monday!

Julie

It's Friday morning and I finished clue #3 of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt  about 9:00 last night. Whew, just in time for clue #4 to be posted today.

Clue #3

I was reading the comments that have been left for Bonnie and I must say some of them shock me.  The audacity of some people - one person asked her to write just the directions and leave out the other stuff.  The other "stuff" is what inspires Bonnie to make the quilt design and choose the colors.  I've found that if I don't want to read all of that I don't have to.  She clearly shows where the directions are.  Anyway, not really my business - but...  It's no wonder that some of these bloggers have little melt downs and tell people what they think. These mystery quilts are a gift. They are patterns that I don't have to pay for.  The payment is having the respect to read some of the fluff that doesn't pertain to me and learning about a place I will probably never see.  If you read that whole paragraph you showed a little patience too. :)

So far, so good with the mystery pattern.  Some sewers are having quite a few problems with size and color placement.  My biggest problem so far is turning my colors around in the first clue.  So now I just have to use those colors all the way through.  We shall see how it works out.  I will say that I make lots of clear, darkly (sharpie) written notes on the directions telling me what color goes where.  Not only did I switch around two of the colors but I started with different choices to begin with.  Yellow is gray and now blue is pink.

Tonight I get to start clue #4. It looks pretty straight forward.  And there are not nearly as many units to sew.  Maybe I can get some of my other sewing done too.  After all Christmas is only a few days away.

TGIF

Julie

Is it only Tuesday?

Yesterday morning my boss decided that we  -  we being the four people that work here  -  would go out for our annual Christmas lunch on Tuesday.  Well, that meant it was gift day too.  Oh, no!  That meant I had to bake my treats last night to have them to give out today.  Luckily, I had already picked out a couple of recipes from the internet for muffins so all I had to do was stop at the store and pick up some fruit.  On to the baking part -

Each container has two cranberry/orange, two chocolate/chocolate chip, and two caramel/apple. I have never made any of these recipes so of course I had to try some of each as they came from the oven.  I must say they all turned out great.  The muffins and a tub of party mix and my gift was as complete as it was going to get.

Each recipe made 12 muffins and there are only 6 in each of those containers so I have way more left over than I will ever be able to eat. I suppose I'll have to share with someone.


Have a great Tuesday,

Julie

Good Monday morning!  It was another of those busy, busy weekends.  I just need one more day to get all of the things done I had intended.  Not going to happen though.

When I got started on the new clue for  Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt I was so happy to open my 2" strip drawer and find quite a few of the yellows and neutrals already cut.  That was a good start.

Pre-cut strips

So I got busy doing some more sewing and cutting, and cutting and sewing and came up with the two sides I need to make these units.

Clue Three

The four units that are seen in the picture above are the four that are done.  To have them to show I got up and sewed those four together this morning before leaving for work:)

Clues One, Two and Three

Here is what the three clues look like together.  Hmmm.  Bonnie's never truly let me down before I don't think it's going to happen this time either. 
 
Instead of spending my Sunday sewing I spent it with the family.  Before they got to the house I made a batch of party mix.  The girls really liked it.  It didn't take them long to figure out that the cheerios would fit just right on the skinny pretzels. 

Allison and Grace stringing Cheerios on pretzels.

Allison saying "Mine" right about now.

Jennifer and Victoria

Jennifer, Victoria and Mom

Jennifer and Victoria made a three batches of cookies.  Grace and I made another batch.  And mom did the supervising.  It was a great day.  And to top it all off Jesse got my garage door working again.

I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend an afternoon.

Happy Monday!

Julie

On Monday I was so glad that we were going to have a beautiful weather week.  I don't know what weatherman I was listening too but it's been nothing but drizzly and dreary.  On a brighter note - it is supposed to get a little warmer tomorrow.  Something to look forward to.

This week I got my order of fabric from Whittle's Fabrics.  Oh, happy day!

Since, as always, I'm mostly stash building there is a little of everything in the stack. The pinks, yellows, blacks, and neutrals will go in the mystery quilt.  The rest of them were just too pretty to pass up.  The two bottom pieces (neutrals) one of which can barely be seen, came from Great Plains Quilting the shop here in town.  I went in Saturday to see what her end of year clearance sale had.  I picked up the two neutrals and four pieces of blacks that are not shown.  I've already been cutting and sewing on them.  What is not in this stack are the three pieces of red that I got from Whittles.

Here are the reds along with their pretty color catchers.  I think I am finally done washing them.  There are six color catchers shown with them and I have washed them twice since using the last one. These three pieces are all Marcus fabrics.  So again, YES NEW FABRICS BLEED.  Thanks Mom for the color catchers.  I owe you a box. :)

Now that they've all been through the wash routine I can get down to using them.  I have a couple of  projects in mind.  Starting with the blue and white fabric.  We'll see how far I get before Christmas. In the mean time I just don't have much to show for all of the work I am getting done.  But I have been having fun playing with my new fabrics.  BTW the fabrics from Whittle's average with shipping just over $5.00 a yard.

Have a great day!

Julie

***Added Note***  I really appreciate the comment that Vicki Welsh left on this post.  A couple of weeks ago when I washed the "Quiltmaker" quilt it bled in a small area.  When I googled how to fix it I came up with Vicki's site Field Trips in Fiber.  She has done a lot of research on how to deal with color bleeds and gives some terrific ideas on how to pre-soak all of your fabrics and how to get out a bleed.  Check it out.  When my quilt comes back from Quiltmaker I'll be trying her removal method on it.

Good Monday Morning!

It really is a Good Monday Morning.  The weather around here should be nice all week starting with today. 

On to a different subject.  Once again this weekend was spent working on the mystery clue from Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery.

Here are my 100 units from this step. Quite frankly, I'm having a hard time getting all of the units done over the weekend.  Last week and this week.  I keep telling myself that just means I'll like the quilt when it's finished since it will have lots of pieces. So far so good.  Since I changed my fabrics around I ended up with the blue and black on these.  Bonnie's had pink and black. Hope it works out.

I used the third method Bonnie gave to make this clue.  How nice of her to give three different methods.  When I read the first example I put the pages down and thought uggh.  Later on I saw that she had given three ways to make them so I chose the stitch and flip.  The baggie is full of 199 sets of triangles.  One set I threw out because of a missing corner and the others are not sewn.  Who knows if and when they will ever get used but I'll keep them just in case.

Now the wait is on for Friday.  It's terrible to wish your days away isn't it.  I'll just have to find something else to get busy with in the mean time.

Happy Monday,

Julie

I was able to spend quite a bit of time sewing over the weekend.  I thought that I'd get a lot done but the only thing I got to was the first step in Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion mystery.  Cutting all the different fabric takes a lot of time.  And I'm bad about wanting to press everything open so that takes more time too.  Here is my completed first step.

These are all the same blocks.  They are just shuffled around differently in each picture.  I'm not trying to give anything away.  I was a little surprised at how those small blocks make such pretty larger blocks.  And who know these may be the border.  The changes to the colors are - I have gray where Bonnie has yellow.  I also switched my pink and blue around.  When I first started I was making the blocks like this.  Then I looked at the directions (on my cell phone, I'll be printing them on paper today) and saw that she has the blue toward the inside of the broken dishes blocks.  So I set those aside and started sewing them with the blue in the middle.  Well, that was putting the blue, black and gray all together and was too muddled up because of the color of blue I went with.  So I stopped sewing, ripped those out, and started over again.  My colors are going to be set in there different from hers.  I will have yellow but it will go where her green went.  It's all so confusing.  And may get worse when the actual quilt starts coming together.  As it is right now I love the way these colors are and kind of hate to see it messed up with the yellow.  I don't know what else I could use in it's place though.

This week I'm hoping to get to some of my other sewing before the next clue comes out on Friday.

I did have a wonderful Thanksgiving that was full of family and food.

My first Apple Pie

Here is my first apple pie from scratch.  There were some lessons learned from this one but it's a start.  And it tasted good too.  There was, as always, way too much food and desserts.  Now, it's over and the rush is on for Christmas.

Happy sewing,

Julie