Week 2 of the Grand Mystery

I managed to get a bunch of the pieces cut and a few of them sewn together this weekend. I used the 3rd method Bonnie suggested, with the bonus half-square units, thinking it would be fun to have the extras for some future project. Here's a representative sample so far:

Can't wait to link up and see what everyone's been doing! If you want to see their progress, click this link

Ginny

Week 1---Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery!

Woo Hoo! It's finally time for this year's mystery!
Here's a photo of a bit of my progress so far on the first week's clue. I've changed the colors a bit from Bonnie's suggestions, just for the fun of it. My main color is orange, instead of yellow, just because when I went to the quilt store to scout for fabrics that day it was the orange I fell in love with.
Greetings to all fellow mystery quilters! I know we're going to have a fun journey together.
Best wishes,
Ginny in Brooklyn

Woven bar blocks and Modern Sampler

I made just 2 woven bar blocks for the October Block Lotto drawing, but I think they're pretty sweet and wouldn't mind winning them. I also whipped up 4 more in blue and white fabrics for my Mod Mod Sample quilt.

Here's my latest progress on the sample quilt. Although it's hard to see from this photo I've sewn some of these blocks together to form larger units, following the pattern for the Queen-sized quilt, and others have been put together in smaller units, waiting to be attached to blocks we'll make in November and December.

I'm really enjoying putting together the sampler and am excited to see it finished.  

Celebration!

"Celebration" is the theme of the Quilter's Guild of Brooklyn's fall small quilt challenge, and here's my entry: a sun in a bright blue sky and a field of flowers. Can you tell I was in the midst of celebrating my summer vacation when I came up with this idea? I used a paper-pieced pattern from  Block Lotto earlier this summer to make the sun, and fussy-cut the flowers from fabric from my stash and appliquéd them on.

I wasn't able to make the flower stems as thin as I wanted them from fabric without them getting all wonky, so I used my sewing machine to create a few stems with green thread. And I used my walking foot and orange thread to quilt it with straight lines radiating from the sun.

I've wanted to cut printed images from fabric and applique them to another quilt since I first saw examples of this technique in some antique quilts in the Shelburne Museum in Vermont some years back. This little quilt was fun to make, and I think it's pretty cute. Now I can't wait to see how everyone else interpreted the concept of celebration, and I'll post photos if I can get some good shots.

Just a bit of progress....

I haven't been doing TOO much sewing lately because I'm still upstate with my youngest son and my dog, enjoying summer and taking it easy. I snapped this photo this morning from a bridge on a rail trail where I walk my dog. You can see why it's hard for me to stay in and sew.

I did manage to finish 14 spokes blocks for my sampler, and then was thrilled to hear from Sophie that my name had been picked as a winner of the spokes blocks for July in the Block Lotto drawing. I am so happy! I think they are going to make a totally adorable baby quilt.

I made these 5 "windows" blocks for the August drawing, and although I love them I will donate my chances of winning this month to give someone else the opportunity to get lucky.

I'm also including a very preliminary photo of a mini-quilt in progress. My guild has called for members to make quilts that are 20-inches square of their own design on the theme "Celebration." I've been wracking my brains for what to do, and finally settled on the idea of a sun with flowers around it. It's going to be very "art quiltish" and weird, which I've never tried before. I'm totally intrigued by the idea of cutting out flowers that are printed on fabric, as part of a larger design, and appliquéing them on with stems attached. I've seen example of old quilts, where the quilter fussy-cut out printed shapes and then added them to a background, and I have always wanted to try it.
I'll post another photo when I get more done.

Don't you love it when you see something out in the world that makes you think about quilting? I went to a sculpture park and museum last week in Saugerties NY called Opus 40 and saw these hand-made bluestone walls. They were so gorgeous I took a bunch of photos with the idea of one day making a quilt based on them.

Here's a photo of the whole sculpture, from one side. It was pretty amazing.

What I've been up to….

I've been spending whatever time I can this summer at my family's weekend place in upstate New York with my 15-year-old son and my dog. Doing lots of yoga, and swimming, and hiking, and of course sewing!

I've been working on my Block Lotto sampler, and just finished 5 sunshine blocks for the full/queen sized blue-and-white quilt I'm working on from this year's blocks. They're not perfect, but I hope the little mistakes won't be noticeable once the blocks have been incorporated into the finished quilt.

I've already assembled a few sections of the quilt, and have started quilting them with light-blue thread. Here are two that I've completed. I hope you can see the quilting in these photos----I'm afraid the light thread doesn't stand out much:

I'm going to put them together using the quilt-as-you-go method when they are sewn into sections and quilted. I figure it's a good way to keep myself from ending up with another UFO, and it will give me some much-needed practice machine quilting.

 

At the start of the month, I also made these 2 blocks for the July Block Lotto drawing. Aren't they sweet?  I think I need to make 9 of them for the sampler quilt…..maybe I'll start them this afternoon.
This morning I dragged my son out for a short road trip to visit the Storm King Art Center sculpture garden. I didn't take many photos, but couldn't resist snapping one of this gorgeous field of white and yellow daisies.

Wouldn't you love to have a front yard that looks like this?

One modern sun

I'm embarrassed to admit how much I've struggled over this block! The reason I ran into so many problems was mainly that I was working with patterns that had come out of my printer "fit to page" rather than the true size. What a dumb mistake. I had some patterns I'd printed wrong, and some I'd printed correct, and I mixed them up.  How stupid did I feel? You don't want to know.

So the block I made first and donated to the Block Lotto drawing is WRONG. It was one of the bad patterns. So I am going to remake that block so I can still contribute it to the pot.

My sewing machine is in the shop, but it is supposed to be ready today or tomorrow. Then I'll get to work on making it over in the right size.

Well I've gotten a bit of practice anyway. Just one of those weeks, I guess.