The Time Between

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a great holiday.  Our Christmas was really great--we had family with us, and that was all I needed/wanted.  Now its time to look ahead to the New Year.  I really like this week--once the hectic and large celebrations are over.  Quite often, I use the time to purge and get myself ready for the next year with a Clean Slate.  This year, however, I don't seem to have the need to purge too much--maybe it will hit at the last minute?

I finally finished the final of the free Mystery Block of the Month by Stacy at Buttermilk Basin.  She was so generous to do this and I've had a great time working with wool this year.

Around the middle of January, she will provide setting instructions for finishing the project.  I'm so excited to see what she has in mind.  Here are some of my other blocks.  

A few months ago, the pattern was for a sunflower.  Since it was the height of dahlia season, I experimented and made a dahlia, too.  I'm not sure which I will put in the finished quilt.  

I'm working on another Buttermilk Basin pattern, too--I think it's called Tree Farm.   I started it but didn't finish in time for Christmas, but that's okay, it will be ready for next year.  Yesterday, I was stitching on it at bee and one of the ladies said the truck was hauling the tree to the recycling center, ha ha.  

The truck is surrounded by pieced tree blocks.  I've got them sewn and all arranged on my design wall.  I will share more about this project later, I'm sure.

The last time I left you, I was preparing for cookie-baking day with my neices.  We had a great time, but it was a long day and we made lots of cookies.

Yesterday was a special day.  I'd like to wish my sister a very Happy Birthday a day late--she had a milestone birthday.  My husband had the same one back in July and my brother-in-law had his earlier this month.  Mine isn't for another year and a half, but it might be time for me to consider making my Jubilee quilt in honor of living a half-century.


Have a great day,
JoAnne

Allietare Part 4

Hi Everyone,

How was your weekend?  Are you relaxed and enjoying the festive season or going crazy trying to keep up with everything?  I had a pretty good weekend, not too busy, but still "Christmas-y."

This is my first post about Bonnie Hunter's current mystery quilt, Allietare.  I'm doing it this year!  I have done two others in the past:  Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll and Easy Street.  I miss it when I'm not doing it, but usually I skip it when I don't have the colors in my stash to play along.  Everytime I have done it, I've changed the colors to my favorite color scheme, RWB.  This year is the same.

Bonnie's colors are based on her trip to Italy:  Golds, reds, blacks, a constant grey, and neutrals.  I thought it over and decided on these changes:  Reds--easy!  Blacks?  Now my navy.  Golds?  I was planning to include gold, but after some thought (and looking over my stash) I decided to substitue light/medium blue for her gold.  Her constant, gray, is now gold for me.  And neutrals are still neutral scraps.  I have tons of fabrics in all these colors but this year I have been doing many projects with Moda's Minick and Simpson fabrics, so I have lots of scraps of them and the fat quarters are handy, so lots of my quilt will be made with their fabric.  I am including other fabrics, too, as "variety is the spice of life!"

This week's assignment was a bit complex.  We were to make 30 sets of 4 "knotless bowtie units."

One set is arranged from top to bottom on the left of the photo.  The column on the right are other sets stacked up.  This picture shows 5 complete sets.  I have 12 of the sets completed, but all of the cutting is done, so I will continue to sew the others this week.  For each set, we use the same red and blue, but use scrappy neutrals.

I thought that having "matched sets" made for more tedious cutting.  If it was all scrappy, I would layer 4-6 strips, cut the triangles or tapezoids, and throw them all in baskets.  To get matched sets, either I would stack a few strips, cut, then have to sort them all out into matching piles, or else just work with one fabric at a time.  I tried it both ways and neither seemed to save much time.  Luckily, I was listening to a good audio book and just enjoyed the process!  I'm sewing in batches of 6.  I can manage that amount without mixing up anything.

For the navy (black in Bonnie's quilt) triangles, I ended up doing one fabric at a time, folding the strip so each cut gave me 4 squares.  Four cuts and I was finished. (We needed 16 of each of 30 fabrics.)

Since this is my first post, I thought I would share photos of the other steps.

The first step was to make HSTs from the contant and neutrals. 

Step two was to make these "Santa Hat" units as well as some other cutting.  Remember, my constant gold is grey in Bonnie's quilt.

And Step Three was to make 4 patches.  Bonnie's quilt has golds instead of my lt/med blues. 

We even managed to get to see Star Wars, The Force Awakens on Saturday afternoon!  It was so good, I can't wait to see it again!

Today is a cleaning day for me,  Tomorrow is a Bee day, and then Wednesday is cookie baking with my nieces.

Have a great day!
JoAnne