Guess what?...

...I'm home this week, and finally put the last borders on my Celtic Solstice top. Yeah. I know it's not like I finished the whole quilt, but I like to celebrate the baby steps and this was a big one. Some of you saw my tweet about my helper wanting to help out with the measuring. I get moments like that :)

Smoky helping with the measurements:

I decided to make a yellow binding for this one, just to contrast the dark green outer border, I'll have to get working on that.

Yesterday I ordered the batting for this baby and another one I want to finish. Now I only have to figure out what I'm gonna do about the backing. The local quilt show is coming up in 2 weeks, so I might just wait and get wide quilt backs locally instead of ordering online. Hope they'll have a good selection! If not, I was really contemplating the new-to-me Robert Kaufman quilt backings. I just haven't decided if I wanted blue or green. Decisions, decisions!

Meanwhile, here's the top:

Fiance is a tall guy with long arms, but even he couldn't reach as far as the edges go so the upper corners are kind of cut off, but you can get the picture without them. :)

I'm trying to decide on a layout for my Lucky Stars 2013 blocks. I'm contemplating putting them on point, which I've never done before. I just want to make the quilt a little larger, since it's 36"x 48" with the 12 blocks that measure 12". I even mocked up my theory in EQ7, in straight setting with flying geese in the sashing, and on point with the same flying geese. Again, I'll just have to make up my mind.

Here are the blocks:

Do you have any suggestions? Let me know in the comment section below! :)

And finally my dear Sleepy turned 3 last Friday!

'Til we blog again! :)

Ready to sew the blocks

I'm thrilled to report that I'm done with all the units for Celtic Solstice Mystery, yaaaay! They are all sewn and trimmed, ready to be put into blocks. 

I just printed out the Clue 6 directions and will start to sew the blocks together.

Here are my Clue 5 units, which are the shaded 4 patch blocks that we also used in the Easy Street Mystery Quilt.

I got a lot of feedback from people that they liked the colors I picked. I can't wait to see this top all together!

I think I'm gonna have to make a list of my tops waiting to be quilted so I can go and buy the batting I need to finish them all. Exciting times ahead! :)

I'll be starting a new project with applique very soon with Gretchen from 120 blocks blog. We decided to tackle this together and I can't wait to start! I haven't decided if I want to do hand applique, or discover the machine applique world, or do both. We'll see what the future brings!

'Til we blog again! :)

Almost there!

Hello again my friends!
I am really glad you're back!

I just want to give a quick update about what I've been sewing the last few days while on vacation. It's Sunday night now and yesterday was the first day I left our house since Monday's grocery run. Does that say something? Also on Thursday we had a snow storm with 10" of snow so I thought it was appropriate if I were sewing all day for a few days. I had lots of food made before the snow hit and since it's freezing cold outside, I have a second fridge on our covered porch.

Stuffed cabbage, chicken soup, and lentils, all snowed in now :)))

Everything is white! Too bad it was a windy storm and not all the snow stayed on the trees :( It's not as pretty as it is usually.

I've been working away on the Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt. Since my last blog post I completed Clue #3 and Clue #4. While making all the small pieces I was thinking maybe next year I'll try to make the units twice the size and make less of them to see how that works out? Or after I see the reveal for this one I can decide if it would work with bigger units.

Clue #3 in the trimming progress:

And all the 25 pretty pinwheels:

Don't you just love yellow and orange together? I certainly do!

Now here are 120 4 patches for clue #4 before trimming:

I still have Clue #5 left which I am eager to finish as the next step is the reveal and I don't want to see it until all my units are done.

'Til we blog again! :)

Celtic Solstice Mystery Quilt progress

Hey Everybody,

Happy New Year!

Have you made your quilty resolutions yet? No? It's okay, I haven't either! I was never the New Years resolution kind myself. On the other hand I'd like to get some things done this year, which I think will go in another blog post. Right now I set down to give an update on my progress on the Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt I'm making hosted by Bonnie Hunter @Quiltville.

It all started with me being behind. That seems to be the situation lately a lot. Does that make any sense? 

So this means I didn't start in time because I was too busy to get things done for Christmas and last December was a little more work than I anticipated. On the upside I've been home for Christmas break since the 20th and now that the Holidays are done I have time to sew!

I picked out my fabrics which are following Bonnie's suggestions:

My greens:

Blues:

Oranges:

Yellows:

Neutrals:

I started to work on part 1 which involved to use the Tri-rex rulers. Have you used those? I had a fun time cutting even though it's not my favorite in the quilting process. My first time using the rulers which was pretty interesting. I had to figure out exactly how to position the ruler to get the point and the sides in line exactly. I worked it out after a few tries so here are my finished units for Step 1:

The second step was making chevrons. We were using the method of sewing the seam on the right side of the marked line to be sure the flipped triangle will be big enough which resulted in having to trim. In the trimming process with the first half I didn't pay attention to leave the background green part and only trim the white triangles so at the end my points don't exactly match up, but guess what? I will not start making them all over again because they took stinking forever to make!

Here they are all trimmed (Step 2):

I'm on part 3 in which were're making half square triangles out of yellow and orange fabrics. I'll post pictures of those when I'm done.

That's all for now, I better get back to sewing because Bonnie has the reveal out which I don't want to see until I'm all caught up!

'Til we blog again! :)