Orca Bay almost done!

Teaser picture!

I got my Orca Bay back from the long arm quilter;  now to get the binding finished next week after my trip to see my Mom.  Today I am wrapping the gift quilts for my sisters-in-law.  Hope I have wrapping paper that's big enough!

Little sis

After I decided to give this quilt to my sister in law for her birthday:

I decided I liked it so much I would miss it and wanted to make something else in that pattern and fabric, but I didn't want to tackle another large quilt.  So I found a couple of charm packs of the "Etchings" fabric and made nine pinwheel blocks for this wall quilt, its' litter sister.  Here it is pinned together on my design board: 

I"ll assemble it after I complete the binding on the gift quilt in the next few days.  The large quilt is set on point but this small version was better in a straight set because it showed the pinwheel blocks better.  Side setting triangles in the gray fabric were too overpowering on the smaller blocks.

Sherry Meyer did a magnificent quilting job on the gift quilt as usual.  I'll post pictures of the pretty design as soon as it's bound.  By the way, Sherry's got my Orca Bay to quilt right now.  I can't wait to see how it looks.

LIttle spools, done

I'm enjoying making these small quilt tops.  It's nice to finish something without slaving over it.  Nothing against Orca Bay, but at times I thought it would kill me!  By the way, I'm taking Orca Bay to my longarm quilter today.  I finally decided not to add another border on the outside and leave it as designed.

Yes? No? Maybe?

OK, I need your opinion.  Here's what I'm thinking about doing to expand my border on Orca Bay:

That fabric is where the color scheme came from and what is going on the backing.  I would love my quilt to be bigger and this is one way to do it.  I kinda like it, but am probably too close to the quilt to be subjective.  So what do you think?

It's done (yay!)

It's finally done!  I'm in the middle of stay-stitching the edge but had to stop for a while because I'm tired of wrestling this stretchy quilt.  I must say, this is a pretty design although a difficult sewing job because of all those bias edges and string blocks.  But, it's done!

Pretty much done, to be exactly honest.  I'm still deciding whether to add a narrow gold border on the outside or perhaps a solid border of the fabric which inspired the color scheme.  It would be nice if the quilt were a little bigger. This is a decision that can be postponed for now.  I'll make the backing and binding and put it away for a while.

And, inspired by the colors, the name of the quilt is "Butterscotch Drops, Starlight Mints and Cinnamon Red Hots". 

Now for the hard part. . .

.   .   .putting the whole quilt together.

I finished replacing the center squares in the gold stars and laid out the quilt center in the floor.  You can see there in the top left corner how much room I have to move my sewing chair!  I need to get it assembled quickly and out of the way.  I like my substitution.  I brings the green into the red areas and the red into the green areas and balances the design, at least in my view.  I am so eager to finish this quilt!

What to work on next?  Well, I have both a New Year's Eve and a New Year's Day mystery quilt to complete - all I got done on each on the day was assembling the blocks.  Then, I can try to finish a small quilt I started making of scraps from Mods's Fig Tree designer lines so I can get that off my design wall.  Of course, I have other unfinished projects like assembling the Civil War sampler quilt and the EQ sampler quilt.  And the Blue Ridge Beauty I started during Orca Bay.  And the quilt my husband wants made out of cat fabrics.  And the Cheddar bow tie blocks that have been languishing in their box.  And.   .   .and, well a lot.  Quiltwise, my eyes are bigger than my stomach.  And I haven't even mentioned the black and white fabric I bought yesterday at Joann's for a black/white/lime green Orange Crush variation that is inspired by a lovely quilt I saw on Vivian's blog, Sew At Home On Pine Ridge.  Take a look at the quilt in her header and see if you don't agree that it's the most striking version of Orange Crush you've ever seen.  Bravo, Vivian!

I have to get some finishes logged somehow.  It's getting ridiculous.  I need to quit reading blogs and getting all this inspiration.

99.9% certain. . .

.   .   .but still playing with possibilities.

After changing out the center squares of enough gold stars to make another layout, I tested the modification:

and I like it, I like it a lot.

BUT

I decided to check out a change that was suggested by several commenters (I think they meant it as a substitute to changing out the center squares, but I checked it with the modified gold stars) and got this:

Interesting, very interesting.

Which do YOU like, the first or the second?  I still have some time before I will be committing to a design because I still have 18 centers to pick out and resew.  What's the verdict?

Green centers

I cut some green 2 1/2" squares and plopped them down in the center of the gold stars.  See?  The green centers tie in with the string blocks.  I still don't know if I'm up for removing all the red centers from 28 blocks and adding the green ones.  Still thinking about it.

Addendum:  I've decided to replace the centers of the gold stars with green squares.  Six done so far, 22 to go.  It's tedious, but I like the results.

Going into analysis

It's time to over-analyze a quilt design!

I'm sure you're dying to -- not.

Well, here's the situation:  I printed the final clue for Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery quilt last night before I went to bed and I am conflicted (oh, when does this NOT happen, ha, ha!).  Since it was already 1 a.m. and I wasn't going to start sewing at that time of night but was curious how my quilt would look, I laid out a 3 x 3 arrangement on the floor and took a picture:

 And my initial reaction was - that doesn't work.

It's the little green string squares, which are perfectly adorable by themselves but sit there in the quilt like they fell from the sky.  Was it the color?  I tried darker green, dark or light blue, brown, orange, red, whatever.  Nope.  The closest thing that worked was shirting squares in the same fabrics as in the blocks:

I liked that;  two color quilts are traditional and this was an honest example.  I missed the motion of the string blocks, but figured that I could piece shirting string blocks if I really wanted them.  But the larger question was, what was wrong in the original design?

I opened up EQ this morning and mocked up the blocks, and then started playing.  And it immediately jumped out at me.  I didn't like the green string blocks in place because they didn't relate to a single thing in the rest of the quilt.  Green wasn't used anywhere else, not in the Ohio Star blocks, not in the borders.  I had kept waiting through the mystery instructions for the third color to appear again and was puzzled when it didn't.  Now I know my subconscious quilt designer was saying that you have to repeat a color or an element in the quilt to tie it into the design.  The green just sits there, as if to say "Where am I?" 

If the green had been used for the centers of the predominantly gold Ohio Stars, with red in the center of the predominantly shirting Stars, it gives the green string blocks a reason to BE, a tie between the elements of the quilt.  Here's an EQ mock-up:

See?  The eye pops back and forth between the green strings and the green star centers and ties the whole thing together.  I even added green binding to bring the color out to the edge of the quilt.  This isn't just a problem because I used green.  When I saw her quilt on the blog, the blue squares seemed to stick out at me but I hadn't analyzed why.  Now I know.  

There are a couple of solutions.  One, I can unpick all those gold star blocks and add green centers - ugh!  Or I can take the green out and make a two color quilt, which is quite cute:

I could even bring the red out into the inner border, but it might be better with shirtings.  

Oh, what to do?

Addendum:  I decided to change the centers in the gold stars to green squares.  I'm doing it now.  Boy, that's a lot of seam  picking!

(Note to Bonnie fans:  OK, you can hate me if you want.  It's my opinion.  You can love your quilt, but right now I'm not quite loving mine. I adore the string flying geese and the star blocks, it's just those small string blocks that are giving me fits.)

Quiltville mystery step 6

...and a day early.  Thank you, Bonnie Hunter, for posting the next step of the mystery quilt on Thursday so we could get our sewing done before the Christmas Eve crazies hit.  And here it is the result of my work today:

I've got some ideas where those red string block triangles and gold/shirting triangles made in previous steps are going to go, but I mostly hope that the next step incorporates some of the third color, which is green in my case.  The red and gold are beautiful, but I was initially thinking about a red/green quilt and would like a bit more green in the mix.  In the meantime a comment from my step 5 photo that the golds reminded the viewer of butterscotch has given me a name for this quilt, with its buttery golds, reds and light greens:  Butterscotch and Peppermints.

Orca catch-up

I forgot to post my picture of Step 5 of the Quiltville mystery when I finished on Saturday.  Here it is:

Still haven't got a clue what the design could be.  You did good, Bonnie!  No guessing this one!

More Orca Bay

I forgot to post a picture of the step 3 and 4 blocks for Quiltville's Orca Bay Mystery quilt when they were done, so here they are:

Aren't those red string triangles for step 4 awfully cute?

And there are more gold and shirting bits too, from step 3: 

We also had these parts from steps 1 and 2:

I still haven't a clue where this design is going!  This is fun!

Another Orca Bay step completed

Bonnie Hunter must program her mystery steps on a timer to appear automatically early on Friday.  I never expected step 2 to be up and ready at 7 this morning.  I was up at 7 only because a hungry cat had camped out on my chest, and it's really hard to breathe with a 12 lb weight pressing down on your lungs.  So since I was up to feed Molly, I decided to go ahead and check for step 2 of the mystery quilt.  Lo and behold, there it was.  A quick trip to the printer and I had the instructions in my hot little hands.  Then I started reading.
Oh.  Oh. String blocks.  Not my favorite but I decided that I WOULD make them and WOULD use them this time, unlike the last mystery where I spent all that time assembling them and then designed an alternate block instead.  Those string blocks are still sitting in a stack in my sewing room, waiting for a home. 

But these were only 3.5" square, and just 72 of them, and they were so cute,  I decided to jump on it.  I've got a busy week coming up.  Tomorrow and Sunday I have to put up the Christmas decorations, then finish shopping and wrap gifts Monday and Tuesday, make sure there are groceries and such laid in for my husband for the rest of the week, and go out of town Wednesday through Friday to see my Mom.  The best thing to do would be to knock out these blocks this morning. 

So that's what I did.  I grabbed a little breakfast, dressed in my comfy knit pants and started sewing.  I don't have a string bin like many of Bonnie's fans because I don't use string blocks, so I had to first cut strips.  Then, foundation papers from the leftover doodle pads from the last mystery.  Finally I was ready to go. 

I was amazed how quickly they went together.  Even pulling the papers off the backs wasn't much of a job on the small blocks.  And here they are:

So who's afraid of string blocks?  Not me. 

But.......there are more red string blocks coming.  How many, I wonder?

Zoom zoom!

Step 1 of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery, Orca Bay, is up and I'm finished!  224 little quarter square triangle blocks in gold and shirtings.  And I mean LITTLE - 2 1/2", they finish at 2".  The lady likes to work small!

It sounded daunting but once I got started it went quickly.  I even made a few extra because I have done stupid things before like losing pieces and accidentally throwing them away.  So I have spares.

One thing I did this morning that I should have gotten out of the way earlier was to cut fat quarters of all the golds I used today so in the future I don't have to drag out a bunch of yardage at every step to cut just a few pieces of each.  I had 21 golds and even more shirtings.  The shirtings were in fat quarters already but most of the golds were in pieces of a yard or more. A fat quarter of each was more than adequate, and so much easier to handle.  Before the next step I need to do that for my reds and greens.   



Quiltville mystery quilt is completed

It's bound, it's labeled, and it's on my bed in about an hour from now.

And you know what? I already have my next project picked out. More later.

Anybody watch "Enough Already!" with Peter Walsh on OWN network last night? He's a professional organizer who tackled a quilter's clutter on last night's show. I don't usually watch it but was alerted to the show on the Quiltville chat group. I'm still conflicted about the resolution. Sure, she got a great quilt studio but it was in the garage, and I didn't see a single quilt displayed in her decluttered living room. It was like "Yeah, you can have your little hobby but don't bother anyone with it." And her daughter seemed a little controlling. She claimed she wanted a better relationship between her children and their grandmother but wouldn't bring them to visit because she said the cluttered house was too dangerous. Admittedly, the living room was a complete fright, but that seemed a little manipulative.

Oh well, one woman's opinion.

Orange Crush!

Here's the center all assembled and waiting for borders, which I will be starting this afternoon. I changed up the Bonnie Hunter design a little, so stay tuned.

Postscript: Yeah, I see it. I got a square turned sideways. But I fixed it.

P.P.S.: Rats, there's another one. I'll fix it too.

Quiltville mystery done!

I'm the one to blame for making it so big, but really - I could barely spread it out in the sewing room to photograph. I've owned houses with ROOMS smaller than this quilt. But I truly like how it's turned out after I tweaked the design.

Well, the first thing you notice is it's BIG. . .

. . .and this layout doesn't even include the borders. It's sort of a wall-to-wall quilt. Finally got all the blocks made. Now to assemble the rows tomorrow. It's doubtful that I'll have it put together before the next clue on Friday.

Test run

I made a few blocks of my proposed alternate block in the Quiltville mystery design. As you can see, they actually form the primary pattern you first see when you look at the design - the horizontal and vertical rows of neutral squares with the red and pink x's in the intersections. Interesting. The primary block in the initial design is now a secondary player.
I think I like this, but I like busy designs. Opinions?

What about this?

Still fiddling with the Quiltville mystery quilt design. I took the string blocks down from the design wall and have been pondering in EQ what else I could use. If I don't do the string blocks between the pieced ones, I think I'll do this alternate block which makes a secondary pattern. As you can see, I like very busy quilt designs!
Maybe the string blocks will end up in a Project Linus quilt or something.