After A Very Long Hiatus

First of all Happy New Year.  I did two things today that I have not done in a very, very long time.  I managed to get my featherweight machine up and running

and sewed a few blocks together from Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt (the one I started in late 2014.)

I am very rusty - but it felt really good to be sewing again.  Of  course I can't press the blocks as my iron and ironing board are still in Charleston - top priority to bring them up to the farm next trip!

The second thing is posting on my very neglected blog.  But if you are blogging mostly about quilting and you haven't touch a sewing machine since April of last year - it is hard to write much. 

This is about to change.  We are getting more settled in our new home - the little farm house is slowly getting the TLC it desperately needs.  And we will be getting our first new building in about two weeks - my new studio!  It will be a shared space between my quilting design and teaching business, the farms fiber work and my daughters art business - but it will be a dedicated creative space.  It will be an empty shell when it arrives (12' x 28') and we will have to do the finish work before I can move into it.

If you had a new studio - blank canvas so to speak - what would be the top thing you would include?

Grand Illusion - the Modest Version

The last few weeks a seen very little progress on my Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt as I have had a paint brush in my hand more often than a needle and thread.  We are preparing to sell our home in the near future and are doing all those little projects that you put off until you are getting ready to leave!

I have finished one block as well as lots of parts and like how it is turning out.

My Grand Illusion guilt will be a more modest version - instead of five blocks by five blocks - I have decided to do three by four.  I don't need another large quilt and as I quilt all my own quilts on a domestic machine - smaller quilts are easier to manage.  

It is packed up for now but it will reappear in the near future. 

Punting Until After Christmas - Grand Illusion Mystery Clue Four

I am still making progress on Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt.  I have been working on clue four off and on since its posting last Friday. Most of the pieces are cut out and I managed to get four blocks finished this morning:

I also finished clue number one this week:

All 100 Blocks!

A I have a few (an understatement if there ever was one) other projects underway, I decided it was time to punt until after Christmas, so I gathered all the fabric:

 and all the blocks and block parts:

and pack it up so I don't have to spend hours searching for it in my disaster I call a studio when the next clue is posted Friday.  

Deceptively Simple - Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt Clue Three

I didn't get a chance to start Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt Clue Three until yesterday.  I thought easy - strip piecing, nothing to complicated, just lots of blocks.

My three error studio rule was soon enacted.  Like baseball (three strikes and you are out), when I plan a long time in the studio, I work until I make three errors.  I find if I continue on, the next error is usually the one you can't easily fix - cutting a piece too small when you are almost out of fabric, ironing the fusible with the glue side up, quilting a scrap to the back of your quilt - you get the idea. After the third error occurs, I stop and leave my studio for a while - sometimes just a walk downstairs to get a drink of water is enough to clear my brain.  Other times I need a longer break.

I didn't have trouble with the cutting, sewing or pressing - my strips worked out to be exactly the right size.

No, the first error I made was being too clever in how I was going to mix up my fabric.  Since I do not have any pre-cut 2" strips, I decided to make all of my strips 2" by 8 1/2" long.  That way I would get 4 rows from each set.  I started cutting the rows from strip A and B separately so that I could mix up the fabric in the blocks and hopefully avoid any blocks that would contain the same fabric.

A few blocks into that theory I realized I might be making these blocks until next Christmas and changed to layering them like Bonnie had done in the clue post and cutting four blocks that will be out of the same fabric.  Four out of 120 blocks - I don't think they will be that noticeable.

The second error occurred when I wasn't paying attention and sewed a black strip to a neutral strip.

The third error was a double - If you notice the bottom block is reversed.   I usually pin all my intersections and have been doing this set with the rows just nested.  It has worked almost every time - except for that block on the bottom of the picture. I was not happy with intersections - took it apart, pinned the intersection and re-sewed.  Only then did I realize that it was reveresed.  I had sewn the rows together wrong for the second time.

I was done for the day.

I managed to work on the clue again this morning and made good progress - twenty-seven blocks finished.  That is all that will get done for awhile as I am headed to the Hobbit this afternoon with the kids and tomorrow is clue four!

  

Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt Clue Two or a Quilter's Drinking Song

I haven't been able to make a great deal of progress on the second clue of Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt this week.  Several other projects had a higher priority - I needed to make samples for the new classes I will be teaching this spring at Stitch 'n Sew

Open Tote - Beginning Sewing

Introduction to Machine Applique

as well as finish the fourth of the placemats I taught this summer and will teach again this spring,

Beginning Quilting

so I didn't spend much time on the mystery until today.

I am planning to use the third method Bonnie posted in the clue to make the blocks, so needed to cut rectangles out of the neutral fabrics and squares out of the black and pink. I managed to get all the neutral rectangles and the pink squares cut as well as 100 of the black squares.

And I made one complete block - hence the reference to the drinking song - one down and 99 more blocks to go.