Next new start...

is a wedding quilt for my niece Anna and her fiance Braeden. Their wedding is April 28th.  They wanted something modern and geometric in grey, white, black and blue.  This is my mockup in EQ7:

I bought the "Manhattan" block off the new EQBoutique, pulled it into EQ7 and started playing.  Now I will visit my stash and see what I have and if anything needs to be added. 

I know that 2012 is my UFO year but it is totally within the rules to start a new quilt if it's a wedding quilt, right?  If the quilt police should ask, that's my story!

I've also decided not to do anymore mystery quilts for the time being.  I absolutely love Bonnie Hunter's mysteries and I'm a sucker for every new one that she offers.  However, because they are intense designs (usually), I end up not starting anything else.  I think 2012 will be the year of UFOs and SIMPLE quilt starts.

I have both of Bonnie's books and haven't ever made a quilt out of them that didn't start as a mystery (ie Carolina Christmas is in one of the books and still at UFO at my house).  I also have LOTS of other quilt pattern books which aren't being cracked that appealed enough to me to buy them. 

So, that's my resolve this year...finish UFOs, more baby quilts for our church babies and maybe a couple of easy quilts from one of these books. And no more quilt patterns to be bought this year, or quilt books, and definitely NO quilting magazines.  EXCEPT of course that I'm going to Sisters in July for the quilt show and all bets are off for the 'no buy' on this trip.  That would just be wrong!

It will be interesting at the end of the year to see how I've done with this 'no buy, simple quilt, UFO completion' resolution.  Wish me well!

Now...up to visit the stash to see what I can find for the Manhattan condo wedding quilt!

Until next time,

Mavis

Baby quilt finish...

I don't quite remember when I started this quilt but I know it was 2011 fall sometime.  I saw something similar hanging in a quilt shop, snapped a picture and then tried drawing a simple baby quilt with a feature/focus fabric in EQ7.  This is the result:

Now that I have a b-line quilting frame, I had this baby quilted in no time!  I think it seriously just took me about an hour, if that.  I wanted something not too swirly, or girly because this quilt is for "Gideon".  I decided on some nice wavy horizontal lines.  I loved how easy it was to get this quilt quilted.  That followed with some hand-sewn binding in front of the TV.  Here's a closeup of the quilting:

Now I just have to sew on the label and it will be presented to the little man tomorrow, along with this one for Miss Olivia which has been done for awhile:

This one has been ready for awhile.  We just needed to pick a presentation date at church and we have been tardy!! 

I hope these babies will feel the love!

Until next time,
Mavis

New Years Day - Tradition and What a Cut up!!

We have a tradition in our family that we visit my sister who makes Porzelky (pronounced por-cel-cha), a Mennonite traditional New Years cookie.  It's really a fritter with raisins and they are yummy hot out of the deep fryer dusted with icing sugar.  My sister is the one who carried on the tradition of making them.  I just enjoy them with my family at her house!  They are truly amazing and I wish I had taken a picture of them. My Dad grew up in a Mennonite family so my Mom learned to make them from my Grandmother.  I've never made them.  I've always been content to let that be my sister's thing.  Anyway, today we spent the majority of the day at her house enjoying a nice visit with some old friends and eating Porzelky and other goodies.

When I came home I thought I would attack the rest of the cutting out of the fabric for steps 5 through to the finale of the Orca Bay mystery quilt.  The big reveal was published on the quiltville.blogspot.com blog just a hair over midnight eastern standard time. I got a beep on my blackberry indicating a new email.  The email indicated that Step 8, The Reveal was now posted.  I was expecting that if I stayed up until midnight last night that I might have a peek before bed.  I certainly was surprised to see it before 10 pm our time!  Thank you Bonnie.  What a nice way to spend the last few hours of 2011, admiring your beautiful Orca Bay quilt and dreaming about my own!

So...tonight I finished trimming the strings of Step 5; cut 700 triangles for Step 6, cut the dark, neutral and red squares and the larger triangles and finally the last two hourglass units.  All the cutting is now done except for the lighter inside border.  I am now ready for some power sewing to get this quilt finished.  The muscles are sore tonight after all that rotary cutting, but what an accomplishment!

Oh yeah...and I published the list of the 12 UFOs I want to finish in 2012.  You will see it on my sidebar to the right.

Hope you all had an enjoyable first day of 2012.

Blessings!
Mavis

New Years Eve -- News Flash!!!

Eureka!!  Happy little dance! No...happy BIG dance!!! My 'missing' Roll Roll Cotton Boll has been found!  You have no idea how relieved I am.

All my readers in blogland and online groups all knew it was only a matter of time before it stopped playing 'hide and seek' and jumped out to where I could find it.  Tonight, after a concerted "Please Lord!!  I REALLY want to find that quilt.  YOU know where it is.  Can you please tell ME???"

I realized that there was one packing box I had not checked in our upstairs landing (on the same floor as my sewing room).  I was thrilled when the box on top was moved to reveal these sweet words:  "Sewing Room".  Heart beats a little faster.

Open the box...oh goodie!  oh goodie!  There it is!  Exactly how I remember leaving it.  What a wonderful gift to close out 2011.  Thank you my dear Lord who cares about the small things that concern us and make us fret.  You are SO good!

Here she is:

exactly as I remember putting you away.  What a HUGE sigh of relief.  I was so worried that somehow it had gotten given away to Value Village in one of our trips to get rid of stuff.

OK...now I can relax and let 2012 happen.  Party on people!

And I shall party on with Orca Bay Step 4 and onwards tonight.  Here's a photo of my Step 4 string triangles:

66 out of 128 done.  I'm only halfway??  Oh well...soldier on I shall and get these babies finished.  The colours in my photo taken by my blackberry make them look more brown but they are actually gold through to rusty red.  I'm very happy with how they play with my aquas and black/whites:

OK...back to my sewing room I go.  I just couldn't keep the good news to myself!

Happy little quilting dance!
Mavis

Orca Bay Progress Report & a Finish!

I'm stuck on step 5 of the Orca Bay mystery quilt on Quiltville's blog here.  Maybe I should recount my foundation papers because the pile doesn't seem to be getting any smaller.  I had a great sewing day with my friend Terry yesterday.  We ended at about 4:30 pm, just about the time our realtor called to say there was a showing request for the next morning (today!).

I looked around at 'quilting central' in my sewing room, and knew we had a lot of work to do to get the house ready to show.  So, long story short, my step 5 is still in progress.  I'm loving the colours of my rusty red triangle strings.

I have done nothing on Step 6 or 7 and am hoping to get caught up before the big New Years Day reveal!  Wish me luck...

But here's something I did manage to finish this week during my vacation days:

This is one of the quilt tops I finished at my November retreat.  And this was my first bigger quilt done on my B-Line frame with my Janome 6500.  Not a bad job but definitely still in the 'practice' category.  But the important thing is that my daughter LOVES the quilt.  It's got a minky type backing on it which was a challenge in itself but that's what my daughter wanted, so minky it was.  And batting too.  Yup...quilt top + batting + minky.  It's a heavy quilt that will be sure to keep her warm.

I better catch some sleep if I hope to get those triangles done tomorrow.  It's been a long day.

Until next time,
Mavis

There's a monkey in my house!

But it's all good because I created him!  I made a jelly roll races quilt and it looked kind of 'jungle like' and I really thought it needed a critter...a monkey in fact.

so, the monkey is now affixed to the quilt top.  Next step is to stitch him down (I did fusible applique) and then quilt it.  I am hoping to deliver this quilt to my grand-nephew on Boxing Day so I have a ways to go between now and then.  But it's so fun, don't you think?

Until next time,
Mavis

Orca Bay - Step 3 Done!!!

I'm elated!  I'm excited!  And I'm exhausted!  But all 350 half-square triangles in blacks and neutrals are done, de-papered, pressed and grouped in 10s.  I'm so excited.  I'm always one of the last ones to finish Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts.  But we're on step 3 and I'm all caught up and it's only Saturday.  I have almost a whole week until the next clue!  \o/   Yay!

But never fear...I have a ton of quilts to work on.  Check out my UFO page and you'll see what I mean.  I'm about to load up a quilt for my daughter onto my quilting frame and do some machine quilting.  I have a 'new to me' B-Line quilt frame, which together with my Janome 6500, is going to be a much more efficient way to get through some of these quilt tops.  I'm pretty excited.


Here is a picture of all my black & white blocks playing so nicely together:

and the Step 2 aqua string blocks, all done!

I'm LOVING these colours!  The only colours that haven't been used yet are the reds.  I can hardly wait to see where we go next with this mystery.

Time to clean up my sewing space a bit. And tuck these little beauties away safe and sound.  And I'm going to try again to find my Roll Roll Cotton Boll missing quilt.  It may be time to clean out a closet or two.  It may have been tucked away in my bedroom closet when staging the house for sale.  It's still bugging me that I haven't found it.  Come out, come out, wherever you are!!!

Until next time,

Mavis