Good Fortune Reveal!

I was so excited to see what MY Good Fortune quilt would look like that I whipped up a few blocks and laid them out on the floor and took this photo. I love it! I've only been making enough units for a half-size quilt.  but now I think I may add to it and make it bigger.
If you'd like to see what everyone else is doing, and to look at the pattern, click HERE.

Good Fortune Clues 5 and 6

I got a bit bogged down last week (Christmas and all!) but I'm catching up. slowly but surely.
Here's a sampling of the units I made for last week's clue:

And here's a photo of a few of the strips I made for this week's clue:

I realized after I took this photo that I left some of the strips much too wide. Bonnie's strips looked much better cut slimmer. But no worries! I can chops some of these strips up where the fabrics are too wide   and reattach them to other strips to make them more attractive, and more fun.

If you'd like to see what the other quilters are doing, just click HERE.

Good Fortune, Week 4

I took the easy way out, or at least one of the easy ways suggested by Bonnie, and cut groups of 4 rectangles from a variety of oranges from my stash. Easy week for me!
If you'd like to see what the other quilters are up to, please click HERE.

Good Fortune, Week 3

I'm excited to be cutting up some of my green scraps!
Here's a sampling of what I've accomplished so far on this week's clue:

I'm finding it a challenge to sew seams that have a seam allowance that's just a scant 1/8 inch wide. I told my husband this morning: "if this wasn't Bonnie Hunter telling me to do this I would NEVER do it, I'd be so afraid that it wouldn't come out in the end. But I trust Bonnie, and I'm going to try it."

If you want to see what everyone else it up to, check out the link in Bonnie's blog HERE.

Good Fortune, Week 2

Here are the units I've made so far using the 2nd clue in Bonnie Hunter's current mystery quilt:

I know I have a big stack of neutrals stashed away someplace and I'm going to find it before I continue on this clue so my neutrals will have more variety. I'm using Bonnie's triangle tool to cut these units from strips. I bought the tool for an earlier mystery and I totally love using it. It makes creating these units so much faster and easier than the way I used to make them.
I'm still having fun and looking forward to the next clue!
To see what everyone else is doing, please click on this link.

Good Fortune begins!

I'd decided NOT to participate in Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt this year for the first time in 5 or 6 years because I've got several projects already underway and seem to be making very little progress on any of them. Also, my dear oldest son has moved back in with us, temporarily, making it challenging for me to work in my sewing room without infringing on his privacy.
But when I woke up this morning and saw Bonnie's Instagram post about the first clue in Good Fortune mystery going live today I had to check it out. Within half and hour I'd changed my mind and persuaded my husband to head to Lowes with me to pick up paint chips so I could start the quilt immediately.
Here's what I've done so far:

I love making Bonnie's mysteries because I always learn so much doing them. Just making these simple 4-patches I was reminded of all the little tricks and methods that go into making finished quilts look perfect and professional.

And I'm especially glad I jumped in for this quilt because its design was inspired by Bonnie's trip to China. I took a 3-week trip of my own to China 6 years ago with 2 girlfriends and and had a wonderful time.

Here are a few photos of our adventures there:

Here we are at the Great Wall. It was August and VERY hot.

Here I am wearing one of China's ethnic minority's traditional costumes that I'd rented from someone for about a dollar along a bike path we happened to be riding on.

Above I'm posing by a lake trying to keep my sun hat in place and below I'm with a bunch of Chinese children and their mothers I met while touring a historic site. Chinese kids study English in school and are quick to waylay anybody they think they can practice speaking with.

To check out what other some of the other quilters are doing, or to learn more about this mystery quilt, click HERE. 

More next week!

On Ringo Lake, Week 6

Here are a few of the units I've finished for week 6! I have to confess I was relieved that the big reveal didn't happen today. I feel pretty behind on the previous clues (I know it's not a race!) and seeing the finished quilt always makes me slow down instead of speed up. It does't make sense, but there you have it.
Anyway, I hope you had a great Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate, and that the New Year brings you many good things.
If you want to see what other people are doing, checking out Bonnie's blog here.
PS. Bonnie's unexpectedly released 2 more clues since I posted this photo, so I'm adding another to show my progress since. Happy quilting!

On Ringo Lake, Week 5

Here are some of the brown-and-neutral geese I managed to make this morning, the day after Christmas. I missed last week altogether, since I was out-of-town at a Winter Solstice yoga celebration, but I printed out the clue so I can catch up.
So many people from all over the world are working on this mystery! If you want to take a look at what other people are doing, just click here.

On Ringo Lake: Week 3

This week I really broke out my orange fabrics! I thought these little units looked cute arranged as a zig-zag, so that's how I photographed my first few.

I can't wait to see what everyone is up to. If you want to share the fun, click here to check out Bonnie's blog.

On Ringo Lake, week 2

I'm enjoying the 2nd week of Bonnie's 2017 Mystery! I'm using regular fabric for the neutrals, but trying to stick to batiks for the colors. I've got a lot of orange batiks (I don't know exactly how they got into my stash, but they're there now and I feel obligated to use them).
I'm cutting these from 2-in. strips, because I bought Bonnie's ruler for the last mystery. It really makes this process go faster, and more easily. I still need to trim each of the geese units after I finish sewing and pressing, but I'm more accurate with this method than some other's I've tried in the past.
Thanks for stopping by! To look at what everyone else is up to, just click here.

On Ringo Lake!

I'm excited to start Bonnie's new mystery quilt. Here's some of what I've done (using only fabrics in my stash) for the first week's clue:

My colors will be similar to Bonnie's, but not exactly the same. I'm going with blue-green batiks and  orange batiks as my two main colors,  because I have a lot of it in my stash I've always wanted to use up.
We'll see how it looks in the end.
To see what everyone else is doing, click here.
More next week!

Week 6 of Bonnie's Mystery

Over the weekend I managed to make a few of the Week 6 units with Bonnie's new ruler. It's really terrific, and a great way to make these little triangle units. I'm so happy to have it!
I was glad to see the finished quilt design--really pretty. I know what I'm going to be doing with my free time in the coming weeks.
If you want to see what other quilters are doing, just click here.

Bonnie Hunter's 4th and 5th steps combined for the 2016/17 Mystery

I missed posting last week because I was away at a Winter Solstice yoga celebration in central Florida, so I'm posting some of the units I made last week and this week together, arranged creatively. Although the ruler I ordered from Bonnie hasn't come yet, I was able to use my "easy angle" ruler for step 5 and it worked fine.
I'm looking forward to the last few weeks of this mystery! If you want to check on what everyone else is doing, just click here

Bonnie's Mystery: Purple 4-patches

I'm a little short on purple scraps, especially light purple, but I got a little help from a quilting buddy and was able to whip up a representative sample for this photo.

I'm still having fun! If you want to see what everyone else is up to, check out Bonnie's blog here.

Week 2 of Bonnie's 2015 Mystery

Here are some of the units I made for the 2nd week of the Provence mystery. I'm going to use only fabric I already own for this quilt, so I needed to go scrappy with the magenta. Some of the "magentas" are a bit red or a bit dark, but I hope they will look ok in the completed quilt. At least they will  not be taking up space in my fabric collection any more.

To see what everyone else is doing, click Here

Neutrals!

I've combed through bags of scraps to come up with a range of neutrals and I'm off and running on Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery. Hurrah! Bonnie's mysteries are always so much fun.

To see what everyone else is doing, visit Bonnie's blog by clicking here

A couple of new projects...

A couple of months ago, I promised some dear friends that I hadn't seen in awhile that I'd make them a blue-amd-white quilt for their bed, and I've been thinking about which pattern would be best ever since. I've got tons of blue scraps, as I work with a lot of blue, so I was on the look-out for just the right scrap quilt pattern. Yesterday I met my friend Dori at our quilt guild's monthly meeting, and she was working on a baby quilt using this Disappearing 4-patch pattern. I fell in love with it.

     When I got home from the meeting I sorted through some of my scraps, found some great blues, and cut and sewed together 6 blocks to get an idea how it would look. I think the blocks finish at 7 in. square each, so the pieces are fairly small. I thought this would be a good way incorporate a fair number of different scraps without giving too much weight to any one fabric. It will be very scrappy.

Here are the 6 blocks together:

Here is a single block:

Sorry, the photos are a little dark, but the white is a white-white and the blues are brighter than they look here.

Below is another quilt that I started a few weeks ago, after I took a machine quilting class from my friend Chris Janove at City Quilter in Manhattan. I think the pattern is called Paving Stones, and I'm using some Kaffe Fasset fat-quarters I've had in my stash for a long time, along with the same bright white fabric in the photos above. (It looks whiter in the photo below, right?)

I chose this pattern because it lends itself perfectly to a quilt-as-you-go project, and I'm quilting each square as I finish it. I am practicing pebble quilting, which I learned in Chris' class, and which I am totally enjoying. Below is a close-up photo of the quilting, so you can see the progress I'm making. ;-)

More updates to this blog soon, I hope. I've been on a break, from blogging and from quilting after a tragic death in my family, but I'm hoping to do more sewing and blogging in the coming months.

All the best,

Ginny

Week 6 of Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Mystery: the big reveal!

I was so happy to see the completed quilt on the Quiltville website this year....I love it! It's going to be awesome. I just put together these 4 blocks to get a general idea what my version will look like. A few people have posted photos of tops that are already done, in various colors, and they look amazing. Thanks again Bonnie for the fun mystery!
If you want to link back to what other people are doing, click here.

Week 5 of Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Mystery

These little units are so great! Loving this mystery!

To see what everyone else is doing click here.

Week 4 of Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Mystery

Here are 4 sets of units of this week's clue. I'm using the old-fashioned method of sewing these because I couldn't get the EasyAngle ruler on short notice (sold out at every store I called!). So it's taking longer, but it's working out fine. It looks like Christmas to me on my design wall!