Chester Creek

Bonnie Hunter has released the colors for her 2020 Mystery Quilt-Along. Link to Bonnie Hunter's Mystery here: Grassy Creek - A Quiltville Mystery (Introduction!)

Bonnie's colors were inspired by the countryside surrounding her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For the first time, I am going to deviate from Bonnie's colors. I am going to take my inspiration from the creek and forest near my home in Alaska. 

 We don't have a lot of reds and oranges in the woods here, so I am going to replace Bonnie's red with a plummy purple, and I will replace her orange with a dark, bluish green. I will stick with the other colors Bonnie chose: gold, yellow-green, white, and gray.

I will not be going into shops at this time. I ordered all of my fabric from Missouri Star Quilt Company. They got it here very quickly. I had to buy pieces which were a minimum of one yard, so that meant fewer different fabrics. The result will be less scrappy, but it will still be scrappy enough, I think.

It is a little hard to get the colors right when you order on line. I had to let go of my usual obsession with finding the exact shade. I am forced to accept a wider range of tones within each color group. I think this will be good for me.

Golds

 

 

 

Yellow Greens

Dark Greens

 

 

 

Plums

 

 

Grays

 

Whites

 

 

 

This time around I decided to take the time to pre-wash my fabric. Even though it is all high quality fabric, I have concerns about colors running and fabric shrinking. I washed the fabric in warm water and dried it in a medium dryer. 

 

You wouldn't believe the amount of unraveling that happened. I started out sewing a basting stitch about  1/4 inch from the edge. It didn't seem to prevent unraveling. I ended up sewing a zig-zag stitch as close to the edge as possible. It still unraveled a lot.

 

And it shrank. I didn't measure it scientifically, before and after, but each one yard piece seems to have shrunk about two inches. Some of that may resolve itself when I iron the fabric. This makes me worry about some of my previous projects. Most of those are unfinished, and most were not pre-washed. How will the fabric behave once it has been cut into small pieces and sewn to other small pieces? Should I worry? 

 

Well, I am really excited to begin this mystery quilt. Tomorrow is the day the first clue will be revealed!

 

 

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.

Finalmente! - Allietare Week Six Plus

While I was on a trip, Bonnie Hunter released the reveal for Allietare. I like it a lot.  I think this quilt probably looks better as a scrappy quilt than as the kind that's not scrappy. (Is there a name for the non-scrappy kind?) I base this on the diagrams in Bonnie's instructions, which show solid color pieces so that you will know where to place your various colored prints.

I can't show you Bonnie's work or the work of others because the quilt-along is over now. You can buy the pattern from Bonnie's Shop.

The (practically) final step of Allietare is putting all of the little pieces from weeks 1-5 together into 10 1/2" blocks. There are two kinds of blocks that need to be made: gray blocks and gold blocks. To make the full size quilt, you need a total of 50 blocks. Since I am making a half-size quilt, I thought I could make it with 25 blocks. (Or fewer. I'm not sure how that would work mathematically, but I was hoping for a happy surprise. It's a mystery quilt, after all.)

Cutting blocks in half to make both sides even is not an option because of the way the quilt is designed. 

So, without the help of a calculator, computer program, or app, I determined that I am going to have to bump my "half-size" quilt up from 50% to 64%. It means I have to end up with a total of 32 blocks. Sigh. . .  I hope I don't run out of fabric.

Meanwhile, I was too impatient to relive Weeks 1 through 5 seven more times, so I forged ahead with the final blocks.

Here is what four of them look like:

See how the scrappiness gives it so much more texture? I really like it.

I had a Sewing Day and invited a few friends over. We had a good time sewing and talking and giving advice to each other.  Susan worked on a baby quilt. Barbara worked on the rescue of an old, well-loved quilt. Marilyn worked on a kuspuk.

 

Hooray for Susan! She finished the baby quilt. Isn't it fabulous?

Me? I worked on my blocks. I now have a total of 12 done. They go a little more slowly than the earlier pieces because you have to be careful with all the points. Twenty to go. And then the setting triangles. And then the border.

I have to start thinking about the backing and about how I'm going to quilt this. . . .