On Ringo Lake, Part One - Wading In

I am so excited that Bonnie Hunter's newest mystery quilt has started! I have looked forward to this for months. The mystery quilt is called On Ringo Lake and you can link to it here.

A few weeks ago Bonnie released the colors for this year's mystery quilt. I LOVE these colors.

I shopped hard for theses fabrics. It was not easy to find fabrics I like. I was looking for smallish prints. I saw many prints that were quite large and I personally don't like to use them in a quilt with a lot of small pieces. I will probably have to go back and buy more of the prints I bought on my first circuit of shopping, but I can't remember which store some of these fabrics came from.

This was also the first time I had some fabric in my stash that I could use. Yippee! I have progressed towards being a bona fide quilter.

The first clue requires us to make some nine-patches. They turned out to be harder than I expected. I carefully followed Bonnie's very detailed, very clear cutting instructions, and I think I did a good job. I sewed strips together to make strips of three. But by the time I started sewing the strips-of-three together, I was beginning to have problems. They didn't match up at the edges and sometimes the center corners were off.

I ripped out a LOT of seams. I began to realize that I needed to press as carefully as I was cutting, and I needed to pin very carefully, too. These pieces are so small that the alignment can be thrown out of whack very easily.

Finally:

I made yesterday a Sewing Day and invited some friends over. I love having someone to discuss the intricacies of various quilting projects with. The sharing, the exchange of ideas, the feedback - it's a wonderful way to sew. It's also more fun and interesting to experiment when others are around.

Susan tested fabric samples to see if they would bleed. Once burned, twice shy.

Lessons learned:

• Press seams very carefully to flatten out the fold. It can make a big difference.
• Pin carefully to make sure nested seams are aligned.
• Sewing with friends is great fun.