Endplay

Part 9

Whoa, Nellie! This is a part to end all parts. A clue of great consequence and substance. It is ten pages long. It is very complicated. There are lots of steps. 

But, this clue contains The Reveal. It is the Final Clue. Bonnie Hunter's brilliance and talent is also revealed. As if we didn't already know how good she is.

The first thing I had to do was cut out a lot of neutral squares. Then I had to cut out some neutral rectangles. Then some blue squares.  

The second thing I had to do was make four blocks (large four-patches, really) using the four-patches from Part 1 and the neutral squares from Part 9 and the HSTs from Part 4 which are now part of the mega-sets from Part 8.

The second step

The third thing I had to do was take the Flying Geese from Part 6 and the Flying Geese from Part 8 and sew them together. Bonnie Hunter cleverly designed this so that the seams would nest when you sew the Flying Geese together. I almost missed it, because I didn't read all of the directions when I made Part 6. I just assumed I knew how to press the seams. Fortunately, it was an easy fix. I just had to press the final seam on each piece in the opposite direction.

The third step

The fourth step involves sewing the four-patches, the Flying Geese, and the pinwheels together into a large nine-patch block. Wow! It looks great. It is amazing how it turned out with all of the aquas, blues, and raspberries matching up so easily. I was so pleased with how nicely all the points turned out and how flat the final block is. There are a few bulky seams, but Bonnie figured out how to keep the bulk to an absolute minimum. I love this star block.

The fourth step

There are several more steps in this final clue. I am not ready to go beyond the fourth step yet. I have to make all of the pieces for Parts 1 through 8 and  have to make quite a few more of these star blocks.

This is the end of the clues, but not even close to the end of my work. There will be more blog posts, but I suspect there will be longer gaps between them. I have had a lot of fun playing with fabric so far.

Playing Catch Up

I thought if I worked hard, I could get caught up to the group quilting-along with Bonnie Hunter on the Frolic! mystery quilt. I decided to try to finish between 25% and 50% of the pieces in each clue.

The clue for Part 1 called for making four-patches using raspberry, light blue, and dark blue. Here are a few of mine. The lighting was bad and the colors do not appear accurate in the photo. But you get the idea.

 



I followed Bonnie Hunter's "nesting method" to make these four-patches. It speeds things up, but what I really liked about it was how nicely the center seams aligned.

Part 2 was pretty easy. I made these pieces with raspberry and neutral. I have quite a lot of different neutrals. I even tried using a neutral that was a plain solid.

Part 2 pieces

The colors are much more accurate here. 

I started out over 5 weeks behind. I don't seem to be catching up. :(

A Revealing Feeling - Good Fortune, Parts 7 and 8

Bonnie Hunter revealed the full design of the Good Fortune Quilt this week after surprising us with Clue 7 a few days earlier. It's stunning. It's wonderful. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this quilt-along.

But, I now have a lot of work to do. I have to finish Clues 1-7. Then I can start on the two blocks and four borders described in The Reveal. Bonnie's finished quilt looks amazing. I am really motivated to press ahead and finish mine, but it will have to wait until I get back from my next trip.

I did a tiny fraction of Clue 7. This involved making lots of double pieces by sewing two pieces from Clue 2 together. In addition, we have to make a small number of quad pieces made with pieces from Clue 2. Here are some of the quad pieces:

Clue 7 also called for making some quad pieces with pieces from Clue 1.

Clue 7 went a little faster because there was no cutting involved, but I did make another trip to a fabric store this week, and that took up some time.

Now, before I go on, I want to talk about a New Thing. During this quilt I started listening to podcasts. That's a New Thing for me. I'm really enjoying it. My daughter recommended Serial, so I started with that. Then I added Lexicon Valley, because I love words and linguistics. Then I found a few more interesting ones. Then I got the idea that there might be podcasts about quilting, and I found several! These are some that looked interesting:

•  Quilting . . . . for the rest of us
•  Sit & Sew Radio
•  The Off-Kilter Quilt
•  Just Wanna Quilt

These quilting podcasts are not professionally produced (I assume) but they are something fun to listen to while I am quilting. Do you have any favorite podcasts?

OK, back to the Good Fortune Quilt. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it this week. I couldn't do much without finishing some of the previous clues, so the first thing I did was to finish Clue 1 completely. Then I decided to make one sample each of the two blocks shown in the Reveal. 
 
Here they are:

The Spinning Star Block

The String Chain Block

These blocks alternate in the finished quilt in a checkerboard pattern and the result is wonderful. I like the Spinning Star Block a lot. I'm not so sure about the String Chain Block. I don't think the red and orange work well together. There is not enough contrast for me. However, I think (hope) that when it is all put together and viewed from a few feet away it will look fine.

Please take a look at Bonnie's Link-Up page and check out some of the finished blocks (and even finished quilt-tops!!) that other people have done. It is so much fun to look at them.

Lessons Learned:

• If you can't sew with friends, sew with podcasts.
• Procrastination has its rewards. I only had to make 192 pieces for Clue 1, not the 240 originally specified.
• Doing sample blocks to start is probably a good idea. The blocks are supposed to be the same size. It turns out my String Chain Block is almost 1/4" larger than the Spinning Star, which is the correct size. I need to think about this before I do any more work with the String Chain Blocks or the components thereof.
• There is treasure at the end of the rainbow! Just be patient and follow it.

 

I've Got This Covered! - Good Fortune, Part 1

Right before our long trip we had people over and I had to put all my sewing stuff away. We have been home for a week now and I am slowly starting to reclaim my sewing space. But not without a fight - from various inanimate objects.

I successfully pre-washed the red and neutral fabrics. The edges did fray, but not too badly.

I set up the ironing board and started to iron and soon realized that the pad that came with the ironing board needed to be replaced. I had ordered one a while ago, so I thought it would be a quick, easy job. But nothing about it was quick or easy. First, where was the pad? A lot of my sewing stuff was in our son's old bedroom. I pulled several large tubs out from under the bed and rummaged through them. No luck. I looked in all the cabinets in the laundry room. Nope. I looked in the basement where more sewing stuff resides. Nada. I finally located the new pad in one of those stackable plastic drawers in our son's bedroom. That must have taken about 45 minutes.😣

I have an extra-wide ironing board. It works better for quilting. It came with a small metal tray on the end that serves as an iron rest.

There is no space between the iron rest and the end of the ironing board. One would have to pull it out in order to replace the pad. I pulled as hard as I could, but it didn't budge. I turned the ironing upside down to look for the little lever that would release it. It was kind of dark, so I picked the board up and moved it over to an area with better light. There was no lever. Absolutely none.

I tried pulling on it some more. I tried it with the ironing board upside down.

If I could remember the brand of the ironing board or where I bought it maybe I could Google it for instructions on changing the pad. I ended up Googling "how to change ironing board pad" and wouldn't you know that several folks have made YouTube videos on this. But none of the videos had an ironing board with a metal tray on the end. They were just plain old ironing boards with plain old ironing board covers. Do you really need a video to show you how to do that?

Eventually I asked my husband to help me. He tried pulling on the iron rest. It wouldn't budge. He got a screwdriver and a hammer and applied some strategic taps and it started to move.😙 Once the stupid iron rest was loose it was very easy to put the lovely new cover on. I really like it. It's much fluffier than the old one and it even has a little pocket for the special measuring cup for filling up the iron or for snippers or for anything else that is usually in the way on top of the ironing board.

Another 45 minutes? At least.

So I ironed all of that pre-washed fabric and snipped off all of those loose threads and started cutting some strips.

I used my new ruler stickers to help me cut my strips. They worked like a dream to remind me what line I should be using.

 
Then I was ready to sew, so I had to get my dear, sweet sewing machine out. I had put it away before our trip because we had people over and then we had a house sitter, so it was better to leave it under its dust cover. I schlepped it across the house and put it on my sewing table. When I checked the thread I realized the spool holder thingy was missing. Oy! 😞 

I wondered if it was left behind when I put my machine away ten weeks ago. Could I have seen it later and stashed it somewhere for safekeeping? I looked through all of my sewing bins and baskets and all possible logical places to put a thing like that. Unsuccessfully. Then I decided to look some more in the sewing room. I looked under the baseboard heater. Then, in a moment of pure inspiration I spotted it on the carpet, behind the table leg. You could only see it if you really looked. I suspect it fell off when I took the cover off my sewing machine today and bounced off the table without making any noise. Is that possible? That was probably a 30-minute delay.

Fortunately, I had no further problems of this sort. I sewed a few sample pieces (four-patches, as it happens) and then measured them in accordance with Bonnie Hunter's instructions. They weren't as perfect as I wanted them to be, but I honestly wasn't sure what to do about it. I had measured carefully and cut carefully and pinned carefully and sewed carefully. I followed Bonnie's Instructions to the letter. Despite my best efforts some of the pieces had one square that stuck out a little. How can this be?

What I ended up doing last time was making about 5% extra pieces. If one turned out badly, I could throw it out and I'd still be ok. I think that's the easiest way to do this. I'm still going to be as careful as I can, but I'm not going to sweat it if a few pieces are less than perfect. I just won't use those. Yes, I've got this covered!

Some of my 4-patches

Link to Bonnie Hunter here: Bonnie's Link-Up, Part 1 and see what this looks like in all sorts of different colors. So much fun!

Lessons Learned:

• When you are nesting two seams together, make sure they nest accurately all the way to the end.
• Make 5% more than you need to allow for imperfections to be replaced.
• Allow extra time to get set up for a big quilting project.
• If a spool holder (or any other part) ever comes off your machine, always put it back where it belongs (on the machine) immediately.

Beaucoup - En Provence Part One (#3)

I am now working on my third set of pieces for the mystery quilt. (This was Week One for most of my sister quilters.) For me it was a good time to stay home and sew.

If my car could talk, it would say "Stay home!"

 When I did last year's mystery quilt, Allietare!, I felt I made it a little too scrappy for my taste. I thought I would try to go less scrappy with En Provence. It seemed like a good idea in the abstract. It turns out that "Week One" calls for a large number of neutral four-patches. This presented me with two challenges.

First, I became aware that in order to make a half-size quilt I would need much more than half the number of four-patches specified for the full-size quilt.  It would require close to 75% of the number needed for the full-size version. Would I have enough fabric?

The first six neutrals I bought for En Provence

Second, and of greater concern, I was beginning to wonder if my idea of "less scrappy" was going to work for all the four-patches. Would I get enough variety with only 6 neutrals? To make a piece like the ones I made for weeks five and six, 6 neutrals would be more than adequate. But to make a variety of four -patches, I was going to need more fabrics.

To complicate matters further, I wanted to make every strip with one "darker" neutral and one "lighter" neutral. I was aiming for a subtle checkerboard effect. (I probably got something less subtle than intended.) But this plan really limited what I could do with the four-patches. I picked up a couple of extra darker neutrals and I fished through my paltry scrap collection for some of the lighter neutrals from Allietare!  (not shown)

After making dozens of four-patches and using up several of my fabrics, I decided the only way to do this was to buy more neutrals and mix them in before I finished any more four-patches. I didn't want to end up with two groups of four-patches, each lacking variety.

The day after a big snowstorm I went to a quilt shop and didn't find any fabric that I hadn't already seen. The roads were bad so I decided to skip the other quilt shops and stop at Jo-Ann's, which was more or less on my way home. I found some nice fabrics from their Buttercream collection and quickly retreated to my snug little sewing area to make more four-patches.

The top 3 and the bottom fabric are from the Buttercream line. The fourth one from the top is from the same collection as one of my lavenders and one of my yellows.

So, it took a while, but I finished a gazillion neutral four-patches, and I learned some good techniques in the bargain.

Bonnie had some great tips for cutting and for making the four-patches nest perfectly so that the center seams lined up exactly.

Perfectly nested

Bonnie also taught a very easy way to "spin" the seams on the back. I had learned a difficult way to do it and I always dreaded having to do it. No longer.

Spin, span, spun. Fun!

Here are the fruits of my labor and here is a link to Bonnie Hunter's En Provence Link-Up

A whole basketful

 
Lessons learned:
Scrappiness depends.
The line on the ruler goes up on the fabric, not next to it. 
Direction matters.

Adagio! - Allietare Week Five

Adagio! Slowly! I expected this week's sewing to go really fast because all the cutting had already been done. But . . .

I started laying out the 4-patch squares and I soon remembered that I had made the squares during the very first week. At that time I didn't have a feel for where this project was going and I only used four or five neutrals. In Week One I only made half the number of pieces I needed, and I told myself I could always buy more neutrals to use for the rest of the little squares once I had a better idea of what I wanted to do.

As I started to lay out the little 4-patch blocks "randomly," I realized that 1) I now had several additional neutrals, 2) none of the new neutrals were going to be in the 4-patch blocks because I made the half-square triangles before I bought the additional neutrals, and 3) if I didn't make some more half-square triangles right away, using my new neutrals, my blocks would not be random and might not look right.

So the first detour was to cut out a lot more triangles and sew them together into gray + neutral squares. 

The second detour was forgetting that I needed to cut the triangles with the strips with the RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER because I didn't LOOK AT THE DIRECTIONS because I can remember how to do something I did four weeks ago, right? I ended up with all my neutral triangles going one way and my gray triangles going the same way, which meant that when I put them right-side-together they didn't match up. So, I cut some more. Adagio! Slow down!

Then I substituted some of the new squares in the 4-patch blocks which I had  laid out. With this much effort going into it, it's not truly random, but I was really going for more of an "evenly dispersed" look. I wanted most blocks to have some of the original neutrals and some of the newer neutrals. I wanted to avoid having a large number of blocks with only the original neutrals. The original neutrals were all very subtle, tone-on-tone mostly. The newer fabrics were a little more "daring," if you know what I mean. Thus, it would be really obvious, I think, if I didn't spread the wealth around.

Third detour: When I finally started making the 4-patch blocks, my machine started eating them. Lots of stopping and ripping out. I changed to my straight-stitch needle plate. That helped, but it doesn't completely avoid the problem. I googled "sewing machine eating fabric and I found a great list of things to try HERE. I like the idea of using a scrap of fabric to get started.

Fourth detour: I sewed five sets of squares together and stopped to check them out. Ooops. I did not pin them before I sewed them and I had a lot of slippage on all five pieces. Thanks to Becca I now know that it is legal to throw bad pieces away and just make new ones, but I don't want my seam ripper to get rusty or something, so I think I'll just do this the hard way.

A detour from the detours:
Before going further, I would like to share another photo (from our trip to Italy) that resembles the pieces we are making this week. This was taken in Pisa. I think one of Bonnie's photos was taken at the same building, but from a different angle.
 

I finally got the hang of this week's "assignment," and now I have half of my pieces done.
 
I did the Stitch and Flip part, and it worked the first time! Amazing!
 

This is probably all I'm going to do this week because I am getting ready to go on vacation and I have lots to do. I don't know if I'll have time to do anything on Week Six before we leave, but I'll try. I'm really sorry to have to miss the rest of the quilt-along. I'm looking forward to seeing photos of everyone's progress.

Before I go, here is the link to Mystery Monday Link-Up Part 5. It is really fun to see what fabrics others have chosen. I have yet to see ANY of my fabrics used by anyone else.