Scrappy Trips

Another Bonnie Hunter freebie.  I had bunches of 2-1/2" strips of batik scraps already cut, so decided to try this pattern.  Ended up making it queen size.

Celtic Solstice Mystery

It's time for another Bonnie Hunter mystery.  These are my fabrics.  I am using a variety of off-white tone-on-tones for my neutrals.  My other colors are coral, teal, lime, and purple.  MY GRANDDAUGHTER, SARAH EMILY, WANTED ME TO BE SURE AND LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT THIS ONE IS FOR HER!!  So I will be adding borders to make it large full size.

We received Part 1 this morning.  I have a Christmas quilt I have to get quilted and in the mail ASAP, so I have not started on the mystery but I do plan to have something ready to link on Monday.

Finally got started on Part 1 and below is a sampling of my star-point blocks, cut with my Tri Recs tool. I made 92 with the coral triangle and 96 with the white.  These are 3" finished units.  Looking forward to Part 2 on Friday.

Part 2 received on Friday, December 6, to make 100 of these "chevron" units, which will be 3" finished.   These are using my teal (it might look more blue in the picture, but it is teal) and lime/chartreuse fabrics, along with more neutrals.

Part 3 received on Friday, December 13, to make 200 - 2" half-square triangle units (using my coral and lime/chartreuse fabrics), which will be 1-1/2" finished.  Using 100 of these units, we are to make 25 pinwheel units, which will be 3" finished.  I used the Easy Angle ruler to cut my triangles and have made 100 of the half-square triangle units and six pinwheel blocks so far.  Will have the rest finished before Part 4 comes out on Friday.

Part 4 received on Friday, December 20, to make 120 4-patch units that will be 3" finished, combining teal and coral this time.  Am still working on them, but have finished enough to share here.

Part 5 received on Friday, December 27, to make 100 of these units, using the 100 half-square triangles made in Part 3.  Neutral triangles were added to either side of the half-square triangles already made, then a large purple triangle was added to finish the Part 5 unit.  This unit, as all others, will be 3" finished.  I still have about 50 more to make, but I have been grand-dog and great-grand-dog sitting this weekend and have had numerous interruptions. I will have them all finished before Part 6 comes out next Friday, though. And I am hoping that the final layout will be revealed soon!!

We were surprised with Bonnie sending us the final layout for our Celtic Solstice on New Year's Day.  Here's what I have finished so far.  I am planning to add an additional border at the top and bottom, then two more borders all the way around to make it a rectangle shape for my granddaughter's full size antique four-poster bed.  Still have to shop for the border fabrics, which I plan to do at the end of the week.  Will post the finished top later.......

Prayer Flag

About three years ago, my daughter Dana and I went to visit my sister in North Carolina.  We visited some quilt shops while there and I purchased some fabrics from the Prayer Flag by April Cornell for Moda line to make Dana a new quilt for her king-size bed.  I had these fabrics laid out recently and someone saw them and asked what I was making.  I told her it was a quilt for Dana.  She asked if it was going to be a surprise.  I said, probably.  She was with me when I bought the fabric, but that was almost 3 years ago and I'm sure she has completely forgotten about it by now. Sure enough, when I got the top together and showed it to her, she didn't remember the fabric at all, but she LOVED it!

I had a layer cake, a jelly roll, and a few other fabrics in various yardages.  I just made strip blocks from the jelly roll and alternated them with the layer cake squares.  Used the extra fabrics for borders.  It finishes at 105 x 105.  Still have to bind and hem but maybe it won't take as long to get around to that as making the top!!

Log Cabin

When I attended the Huntsville Heritage Quilters' Quilt Show in Huntsville, Alabama in October, I purchased a Log Cabin Trim Tool by Creative Grids from one of the vendors.  Starting with a 2-1/2" square in the middle, you can then add any size strips that are at least 1-1/2" wide up to......whatever.  You sew two light strips and two dark strips around the square, then using the tool and lining up one of the squares on the tool with the 2-1/2" middle square, you trim all four sides and end up with a 4-1/2" square consisting of the center square and four equal 1" (finished) strips all the way around.  Repeat that process two more times and the last cut will give you a finished 8" square.  I pulled strips from my boxes of strings, boxes of pre-cut 2" and 2-1/2" scrappy strips, and cut more from scraps.  When I finished, I had a total of 56 blocks.  Had no idea how I wanted to lay them out, but found a layout in one of my Quilter magazines that gave me this idea.  It took only 42 of the blocks, but I was able to sort them into enough blocks of each color to lay them out by rows of certain colors.  I still plan to add borders to this to make it queen size, but wanted to go ahead and get a picture while it still fits on my design wall.

Finally got some borders on this top with fabric from my stash.  Now to find just the right backing for it...........I will have to go shopping!

Sister's Choice

Just remembered that I had completed this scrappy quilt a few weeks ago and wanted to share it.  I had spent several days one week cutting all my scraps into 2-1/2" strips and ended up with about 700 strips. Since I had the strips cut, I went looking for a pattern that would use up quite a few.  I found this one in Bonnie Hunter's free patterns on Quiltville and paired up enough strips for 63 nine-patches.  Then I used a variety of greens for all the star points (eight folded corners per block....yikes!  thought I never would get all those finished).  But I persevered and am happy with the results.

Cats in the Moonlight

I have a "large and in charge" (as my daughter calls him) black cat named Oliver.  He is 13 years old.  He likes to help me with my quilts, as you can see from the picture below.  When I went to see my sister in June, she had a new wall hanging on her wall in honor of her black cat who had passed away.  I loved the pattern so she shared it with me.  Here is my version of black cats in the moonlight.  I showed it to Oliver when I finished it, but he wasn't all that impressed......he just grumbled because I had disturbed his nap.

Florabunda!

This is one of the many free quilt patterns on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site.  I had this very large print fabric that I wanted to cut into small pieces to just show the colors in the fabric rather than the overall design, so I chose this pattern.  It is really an easy pattern to do....HOWEVER, I made it one of the more difficult ones I have done by NOT thinking about what I was doing.  Without going into a lot of detail, just let me say that if you change machines in the middle of sewing units together for a project, BE SURE to adjust your 1/4" seam allowance to be exactly the same on both machines.  TRUST me, this is very important.  I had to make a lot of adjustments and re-adjustments to get the smaller units to fit together as well as they did, so please don't look too closely at the squares that aren't quite square and the seams that don't match exactly as I would have liked. Needless to say, I won't make this mistake again any time soon!