Thursday, December 20, 2012

Waiting until the last minute!

Decided that I had better get something on the blog or it would be too late to make the link for this week.  I did not get much done on Clue 4 of Easy Street, as I had many other thing to do this week.  Last minute sewing for Christmas and such as that.

I did get a few of the purple and turquoise geese made and a few of the 3 1/2 inch green blocks cut for demonstration purposes.




No idea where I got the green with the little lavender sprig print, but I think that it will help to tie the colors together.

Another reason that I didn't get much sewing on the mystery is this little quilt.  When I finished with clue 3, I was in a sewing mood and pulled something off the the shelf to complete.  I was determined that I would finish this project that I picked up on a shop hop in 2005!


I miss-cut several times, it was a good thing that there was extra fabric in the kit.  This should make a cute table topper as it is only about 38 inches square.  Anyway off to get this in with all of the posts in Bonnie's link for Clue 4 of Easy Street mystery!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Bury the Lede

Well, the weekend was rather productive, but the week was pretty much a total loss.  Didn't get much done as I had a horrible cough and laryngitis that lasted all week.  It took a day and one-half of resting my voice on Saturday and today to get back to something that sounds like normal.

I didn't get all of the part 2 geese done for Easy Street before the 3rd clue came out on Friday.  So I did have some catch-up to do.  Luckily, Bonnie had a couple of sessions of Quilt Cam this weekend, so I had time to get caught up.  I finished up the purple geese and then started on the new blocks so now, I'm all caught up with the clues.  Am waiting to cut the green squares until I know how they will be used.  Then I can chose the 'right' green.

I ended up not using a couple of the aqua blue/turquoise fabrics that I had chosen because they looked to light.  My colors for this group are very saturated and the lighter ones would just have washed out too much.  Anyway, here at the Part 3 blocks of Easy Street in all their glory!


I was playing around with the blocks and the rectangles that we had cut previously, anyway these are laid out on the 'outback' part of my Koala Outback Jr. sewing table.  The green thing at the top of the picture is the box that the mystery pieces live in until they become a quilt.  Here they are all arranged in their separate compartments.


The notebook has the clues for this year and from last year's quilt, Orca Bay.  Now comes the buried part.  I said that I was finishing that quilt in last weeks linked post and did get it done to take to my guild meeting on Thursday.  I am a member of the Lake Area Quilters Guild.  I would like to thank the ladies who helped me get the picture of my quilt!  I didn't have anyplace to hang it for photos.


You don't really get the full effect of the amount of movement in this quilt until you get a chance to step back and take a look at it.  I really like the red and blue.  I decided to add the black border to make it a little bigger to fit the bed that will be graced with this quilt.  Penny Barnes of The Quilted Forest did the machine quilting for me, using a variegated thread.  This is a freehand design.  The red and blue print that you see is the fabric on the back of the quilt.


I was quite pleased with the finished product and if Easy Street is as good (and I am sure that it will be) I will be a happy camper.  

We did get a little snow today, none of which stuck around very long.  It did look quite impressive for a while. This is the tree in the yard across the street from my front door, taken this afternoon.


Happily, it did not snow like this for very long!  

Looking forward to seeing all of the progress on the Link-up on Monday!  It is so much fun to see what everyone is doing!

Happy quilting!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Purple, Purple. Where is the Purple?

I was up early to see about the clue for Easy Street.  Picked up the iPad from the nightstand and looked up the new clue!  I tried to print is out before I realized that I had unplugged the wireless printer when I was decorating for Christmas.  Hop out of bed to plug in the printer and get that clue on paper!  Unfortunately, then I had to get ready to go to work.  I turned out to be an interesting day, as I had lost most of my voice.  I did manage to croak my way through the day with a minimum of times repeating myself because people could not understand what I was saying.

I had not gone looking for the purple after the initial information about the colors in the quilt.  I thought that I would have enough, as I had some left from a project from several years ago.  One of my son's friends was getting married and wanted a quilt with black, tan and a little purple!  My first thought was - what a color combo.  I usually make scrappy quilts for gifts, so off I go to get the colors.  I had blacks left over from that project, but could not find them for last year's Orca Bay.  Well, found them this year!  A day late and a dollar short, as always.  I was determined that I was going to find those purples this year! And I did!

Here is a picture of the original project.  This is a smaller copy of the queen sized quilt that I made from blocks that I put away so well, I could not find them for the queen quilt. (Am I sensing a theme here???)


The pattern is Rocky Road to Dublin and I think that it looks quite nice, even if I had a few thoughts about the combination of colors!

Off to look for the purples!  I finally found the strips that I knew that I had in the 3 inch bin.  It hurt just a little to lose that inch, but I can use it in some string piecing someday.

Here at the strips, both 2 inch and 3 inch.  I think purple give such a rich look to any quilt.


I did get about 20 of the flying geese done and quite a few more cut out, but I did not have much time for sewing this weekend as I went to see my daughter for her birthday and also to see this little guy


I think that he is a good excuse for not having all my flying geese done!  What do you think?

Here are the geese that are done and the ones that are cut and ready to go!  Hope I will get a chance to sew a little here and there this week and get them finished up.  If not, then they wait for another day!


I have really enjoyed reading all of the blog posts from all over the world!  Last week I was in the first 50 and this week I didn't make the first 150, oh well.  Better 'late' than never.  I hope to have my Orca Bay quilt finished for the Monday Link-up next week.

Happy sewing, everyone!