Celtic Solstice (Winter Solstice) center is done!

TA DA !!!

I pushed through tonight to get the blocks together for the center of my Celtic Solstice quilt (Bonnie Hunter's mystery from quiltville.blogspot.com).

I've got my place reserved in line to have this mother of all quilts (it's huge!) machine quilted. There's to be no dilly dallying.  I'm thinking I'm going to change the borders slightly.  I saw someone's quilt on the facebook page for the mystery and she had completed the 'spikes' (see how they stop at the border on the tile blocks?) by eliminating the first neutral border that the pattern called for and putting the neutral spike facing out (every second row) thereby completing the four points around the tile.  The rest of the rust coloured tri-recs would be in between the neutral spikes, also pointing out.  So instead of the tri recs units swimming around the quilt,  they will be pointing outward. I wish I had a picture to show you.  Forgive me if I've confused you.  This brain is tired but it was a fun day getting the quilt top center piece done.

And Bonnie Hunter has arranged a 'linky' party on her blog so you can go back and look at all the different variations.  What a colourful world!

Oh yeah...congratulations Seahawks on an amazing win!

Until next time,

Mavis

The Big Reveal...puttin' it altogether...

I had the most delightful surprise on New Years' Eve.  I just happened to check facebook around 10 p.m. and found that Bonnie Hunter had released the final clue and the big reveal for Celtic Solstice at 9 p.m. my time (just after the ball dropped in Time Square in New York at midnight Eastern time).

Funny how many guesses I had and how wrong I was about the final layout.  But I was totally delighted to see the final pattern.  It's just gorgeous.  I absolutely love it!  And best of all, all the anxiety I felt about my colours was in vain as they work just fine!

You can read about the last step and the reveal HERE.

As always, all those itty bitty parts come together beautifully to make a stunning quilt design.

7 of my friends in my satellite group met together this past Saturday, January 4th for a Celtic Solstice Sewing Day.  Here are a few pictures of that day and what we accomplished:

Let's start with mine.  I had a few done before I arrived.

These are on the design wall.

My production line.  Started with the pinwheel row then added the top and bottom rows.  

Teresa's scrappy version

Pat's.  She also used yardage.

Jeanine's.  Her four patches were perfect at exactly 3.5".  I was so impressed!

Carol's Tri-recs.  Gorgeous colours!

Mary's fabrics.  She's starting soon.  She brought her fabrics to show us.

Sharlene's.  She chose her colours from a paint swatch of coordinated colours at Home Depot.  Smart!

Some of Sharlene's units.

I think we are all going to have very interesting and very different quilts.  We all said how much we loved this pattern created by Bonnie Hunter.  Sharlene and I are making the king size.  I think all the others are making the smaller version.  But we are all having the same amount of fun, fun, fun!

Until next time,
Mavis

Almost caught up with Celtic Solsice

How great it has been to have Christmas week off from work.  Now that Christmas is over and my time in the kitchen is paying dividends with turkey leftovers, I've been spending some time getting caught up on Celtic Solstice.

Step 1 is all done - 380 tri recs units in total.

Step 2 is all done - 244 chevrons in total

Step 3 is all done - 488 half square triangles out of which I made 61 pinwheels

Step 4 - 10/300 four patches are done.  But I realized that I had the wrong colours in my four patches so back to the drawing (sewing) board.

They should be brown and the rusty/orange.




Step 5 is done - 244 split triangle units in total.

I've actually started a second one in the smaller size  but it's been all I could do to keep up with one.  I'll finish the second one as time permits.

Step 1

Step 2 (only 1 chevron done - the one on the right)

I was glad not to have cut out all the pieces for Step 2 because there was a tutorial for a strip piecing method which I think will go much quicker.  PLUS...I am waiting for the arrival of my new Accuquilt GO cutter and am hoping to do some of the cutting for the second quilt with it.

So that's all the progress on these quilts.  I'm almost caught up which, given this is a king sized quilt, is pretty amazing.  I don't want it to languish on my design wall for as long as Easy Street did.  So wish me luck!

Until next time...which is probably the next clue.

Mavis

Celtic Solstice, Clue 3

I didn't make much progress this week on Clue 3.  I was busy working on finishing the binding on my Easy Street.

I did try one set of pinwheels to test my colours (out of curiosity) of my first king colour way.  I didn't do the second Christmas set.

I'm using Triangulations for my half square triangles and they work perfectly for me. 

The only downfall is that when tearing off the papers, if you don't have your stitch length set close and you tug too much, you can undo the stitches.

Here is my first pinwheel ready for sewing together.  Now that I look at it, I'm going to double check my colour placement before sewing them together. 

Clue 4 comes out tomorrow morning and Bonnie said on her blog post today that it will be the easiest clue of all.  How considerate is our dear Bonnie to do this for our last Friday before the busyness of Christmas tears us away from our sewing rooms.  I am hoping to get my step 3 clues finished in between Christmas celebrations.  I'll bet we're going to start building blocks soon!  What a fun mystery this is!!

Until next time,

Mavis

It's a WRAP!

Last night I finished sewing down the binding on my Easy Street mystery quilt (Bonnie Hunter's 2012 mystery quilt pattern).

Here it is:

Here's a closeup of the quilting done by Jeni Mummery of Quilted on the Rock:

And here's the binding being sewn down:

Wild backing fabric eh?  Very Art Deco but the colours worked perfectly and it was on the sale wall so I grabbed it while I could.  I had a slight mishap during the binding of the quilt.  Not a mishap with the quilt per se...but the thread:

At first glance, how does this hit you?  Unsure of what it is?  Well I will tell you.  It's what a bored Jack Russell can do to a Connecting Threads spool of thread when unsupervised for two minutes.  That's all it took.  I called her.  She didn't come.  Someone left the door open to the room where my quilt binding was in progress and she found it.  And she destroyed it in about as much time as it took me to find her.  No lie!

And here's the little angel herself:

Meet Sophie, the Destroyer!  Here she is snuggling down on my discarded ironing board cover.  I bought myself a new one and she thinks it's now her bed.  Just stay away from my thread little miss!

Anyway, after purchasing another spool the same colour locally, I managed to get Easy Street done.  I just have to add a label and then wrap it up for Christmas.  It's going to my nephew.  He's just purchased his first home so it's kind of a housewarming/Christmas present all wrapped into one.  I hope he enjoys it.  I sure loved making this quilt.

My next UFO to be tackled (in between mystery clues from Quiltville's 2013 mystery quilt called Celtic Solstice) is my Orca Bay:

 

 

I finished the body of the top last November, 2012, but haven't yet got the borders on.  I am going to push myself to get it done as early in the New Year as possible so that it's ready for the 2014 quilt show in May.

Until next time,
Mavis

Celtic Solstice Clue Two! (x 2)

Phew!  I managed to get clue 1 done on the first weekend of the mystery, so during the excitement of waiting for clue 2 I decided to play with some Christmas yardage that I had purchased for a second Carolina Christmas quilt.  After making a couple of the units in that quilt, I decided that I wasn't going to actually do two Carolina Christmas quilts. Not quite a UFO...more like an abandoned project.  But I loved the fabric and have been waiting to do another Christmas quilt with it.

It started innocently enough.  I said to myself, "I'll just try a few of the step 1 blocks and 'see'".  Hmmmm.  Interesting.

I likey!!!  So then I decided to go for it (after lots of encouragement from my online quilting friends who saw the picture and urged me on).  So I may have bitten off WAY more than I can chew, but I'm committed now.  So that's what I was doing when clue 2 was released.

So we're now 5 good days into clue two and here's where I'm at:

I've cut I think 488 of these (and 488 of my neutral and am marking the diagonal line so that I can sew a straight line on all 488 of them.

And I also cut some of the second fabric to make the second colourway.  Here's a sample of both finished chevron blocks:

I love both of these colourways and they will be so entirely different.  The one on the left will be the king sized quilt while the one on the right will be the smaller version.  I am envisioning the smaller one being a Christmas throw quilt for our livingroom.  But that would be NEXT Christmas!  The king will be for our bed.

And here's the start of the blue set of chevrons:

 

Someone mentioned that they look like little chocolate mountains.  Mmmm.  That works for me!  Who doesn't love chocolate??!!

Anyway, they are slow goin'.  I read a clue on Karen's blog about an alternate way to piece these.  It's here.  I truly admire those people who can 'see' a different, easier way of doing/accomplishing something.  I do not have a math brain at all and couldn't have figured that out to save my life so am grateful for those that can, especially when they share!  Thanks Karen!

Once these chocolate mountains are done I will be trying Karen's method for the second quilt.

If you want to see what others are doing with their colours and progress, here's the link back to Bonnie's blog where the other blogs are linked.

I was hoping to attack some more of these chevron units tonight but I'm a little weary after a full day's work so maybe tomorrow night I'll make some more progress.  I think I hear  my pillow calling and that's enough for one day!

Until next time,

Mavis

Celtic Solstice First Clue!

What a busy weekend it has been!  Bonnie Hunter released the first clue for the 2013 Mystery Quilt, "Celtic Solstice" and I finally got to cut into this beautiful fabric:

I saw this wrapped bolt of gorgeous batik in Fabric Depot when I was in Portland in July 2012.  I've been saving it for a special project.  Celtic Solstice is that project!  Rather than doing my quilt scrappy, I decided to go with batiks and to coordinate my fabrics.  So I purchased yardage to match:

True to form, Bonnie introduced a new tool and technique:  the Tri-Recs ruler.  I was very fortunate to already have this set in my tool kit.  Coincidentally, I just finished this quilt top which used the same unit but I used a paper template method.  This quilt is called Tennessee Waltz:

 But let's try the ruler!  Let's get busy!

 

 

I'm doing the large king-sized quilt.  I have a whole bolt of the focus fabric and purchased enough yardage to make the big one because we have a king sized bed and it seemed like a good use of this special batik purchase.

I sewed the whole weekend with a friend visiting from Seattle.  She was working on my baby Janome while I worked on Ferdinand, my featherweight:

Pictured here is one tri-recs unit, one "Bow-dacious" leader/ender unit (another Bonnie Hunter pattern from her book, "Adventures in Leaders and Enders") and my trusty pink post-it notes stack marking my 1/4 inch measurement and serving as an edge to follow.  Mr. Ferdinand is a speedy guy and without that guide my blocks would be really wonky!

After a full weekend of sewing, I finished all 140 of one block and 240 of the second one.  Here they are in progress:

One side done and ready for pressing!

Done in piles of 10 makes the counting easier.  And many, many hours later, they are DONE!

It was a marathon and it was a blast!  So far I'm keeping up to date but we'll see if I can maintain that pace.  I haven't yet been able to keep pace on any of Bonnie's mysteries.   I know it's not a race.  I have loved every single one of Bonnie's mysteries that I've done (this is #6).  And of course a special thanks to Bonnie for hosting and leading yet another free mystery.   If you want to join the fun, it's not too late!  You can get the information HERE.  And thanks also Bonnie for the link-up party.  Click here:  http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2013/12/celtic-solstice-mystery-monday-link-up-1.html

It's back to work tomorrow.  We have to wait until Friday for the next clue.  That should give the quilting muscles time to recover LOL.

Until next time!
Mavis