Fabric Selections for Bonnie Hunter Frolic Mystery

Happy Thanksgiving if you are here in the U.S.  Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt starts tomorrow, so I thought I'd do a quick post to show what fabrics I'll be using.  I changed the paint chips very slightly, but I think I ended up pretty much the same as what she has.
Scanda 
Green--I went for Organic Green
I was going for a bit more purple than burgundy.  Still pretty similar though.
The whites
I used the color Swimming for the aquas.

Dress Blues
The good thing is that much of the fabric came from my stash.  The bad part is I bought a whole bunch more trying to match the Scanda color and NONE of them worked!  I didn't use most of the extra navy fabrics I bought either, but I love navy and it will definitely get used.

How did I do?  Any tips from anyone who has completed one of Bonnie's mystery quilts before?  This will be my first one.

OMG, It's November's OMG

I can't believe it, but I actually got my One Monthly Goal project for November done.  And it's not even the end of November yet.  There were times that this project seemed insurmountable. The first two weeks of November were really busy with appointments and preparing for the FLL competition.  I was sick a good part of last week.  So I really had to work hard the last few days to pull this one off.

Here is my finished Pink Grapefruit top (pattern by Coleen Merte of Northwater Quilts).   I started this project on November 6.  The fabrics I used include Moda Bella Solids Kelly and Sapphire, Kona White, Cotton + Steel Netorious in Velvet Sky, green with arrows by Riley Blake, unknown green print, unknown green text, green polka dot from JoAnn, Architextures Blueprint text, and one of my favorites, Market Plants by Paula and Waffle for Dear Stella.




I found this to be a pretty challenging top.  The pieced blocks were really easy, but I found the orange peel blocks to be pretty intense.  I made sure that my stitching was barely visible when sewing down the peels, but when I actually joined the blocks, many of them became extremely visible. That was disappointing.  I'm thinking I'll need to quilt right along the edge of each peel to hide them.

I ripped a lot of seams and stitching lines on this one.  There is one block intersection that I redid at least six times.  There are quite a few imperfections.  I think the overall impression is okay though. I should note that I did change a bit of the orange peel layout to make it a bit more symmetric.

Now I just have to iron a serious amount (around seven yards, I think) of backing fabric.  
And decide on a quilting plan.  That is a goal for another month though.

Be sure to click the link below to find others' OMGs.

Linking with For the love of geese.

Working on My OMG

Our FLL (FIRST Lego League) team, Something to do with Waffles, competed at their regional qualifying tournament on Saturday. It's a long day, full of hurry up and wait scenarios.  We had what I feel is our best Core Values performance ever, an okay project presentation, and our robot did really well.  We ended up with two second place awards in robot design and robot performance.  We also placed second overall (out of 21 teams), and will compete at the State competition in December.  We are taking a much needed two-week break and then will do a few more practices before the competition date.
After recovering from that, I started working on my One Monthly Goal project, my Pink Grapefruit quilt.  I made all the orange peel wedges the other night.
Yesterday I started working on my layout.  Here's where it is so far, though I think I have a few more changes to make before I start sewing everything down. I want to make at least one more green wedge.  One row at the bottom is also missing at the moment.
At the same time, I was quilting one of my own projects.  I hesitate to show this, but in the spirit of keeping it real, here it is.  I made my backing and loaded it a few days ago.  Yesterday I loaded the top and got to work.  Then I got to the last row, scrolled my fabric, and discovered that my backing is too small.  
So I will be driving to the store where I purchased the backing fabric in a bit and hoping for the best.  Lesson learned.  Always double-check before loading.  I do want to take a moment to say that I always lay out customer quilts on the floor to see how everything works out before I even think of loading.  I skipped that step on my own, and see what happened?  I should have known better, because after I washed it, it had lost a quarter yard of length.  I never even thought about checking how much width it lost.

Here's hoping your sewing is going better than mine currently is.

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and For the love of geese.


Classes, Snow, & More

Well, it's been a week.  I feel like I say that a lot lately!  On the plus side, my daughter's pre-calc class has finished and we survived and did ok.  Now we get a 12-week break before the next round.  Also a plus, I shared my 365 Challenge quilt at the larger, more impersonal guild I belong to and it went over really well. One of the ladies in the guild also made one, and she's trying to convince me to enter mine in the IHQS show in the spring.  I didn't complete it with the thought of public viewing and I'm very aware of its flaws, so criticism won't hurt my feelings on this one. Maybe I will enter it. I still haven't shared a picture of the final quilt here.  Hopefully soon.  I just need to actually take a photo of it.

However, we are currently looking at this sort of weather.  Yuck, and too early.

Another positive is that I spend last Wednesday taking a quilt class with Coleen Merte.  It was really nice and relaxing to spend an entire day just sewing outside of my home.  I really needed that mental break.  Here is a picture of her quilt, Pink Grapefruit.  Mine is in progress and it is my OMG for the month.  I haven't worked on it since last Wednesday.
Coleen Merte's Pink Grapefruit quilt
My not Pink Grapefruit WIP
My son, who has managed to have perfect attendance pretty much K-5, has missed four days of school in the past few weeks.  I don't really mind and am enjoying some extra time with him, but I wish two of those days weren't because of illness, and weren't the week of FLL competition.

Ah, the source of all my stress.  Our FLL competition is this coming Saturday.  This year the team is split between elementary and middle school and it's been supremely difficult to get everyone in one place at one time on a regular basis to practice.  Two of the seven are sick this week.  I'm trying to remind myself to just breathe, it will be ok.  I just feel a lot of pressure to have a very positive outcome.  We'll just try our best and roll with it.  It's all we can do.  And this is my last year as a coach, so there's that.

Next week should just be sunshine and roses!  Much less stress and lots more free time, regardless of the outcome.

What with all the appointments and the sickness and whatnot, I had a quilt partially loaded onto the frame for over a week.  Yesterday I finished loading it and got it quilted.  This project dates back to 2005!  It was a cover quilt for McCall's and I made it in a different color way.  The quilting pattern I chose had a lot of backtracking, which I generally avoid, but the pattern seemed to fit the quilt and it seemed like a good time to try it out.  This quilt is 51" square and it took over four hours to complete the stitching!  Yikes!  Now I just have to sew down the binding.  This one is one of my goals for the FALQ4.
Quilting in progress
OOPS!  LOL  This is why you shouldn't sew when you're really tired.

I've also been working on a secret project that has a fast-approaching deadline.  The sewing is done, but the photography is not going especially well.  I seem to lack the stage-setting, clear, well-lit photo gene.  And I am terrible at photo editing and don't have the skills or tools for it.

Oh, and I thought it would be a great idea to try to complete Bonnie Hunter's Frolic mystery this year.  I pulled a lot of fabrics from my stash, decided I didn't have quite enough, and tried to order matching fabrics online.  Fail!  About a third worked.  LOL.  I'm not sure I'll be up to the challenge, but I will try.  Any tips from anyone out there who's completed one of her challenges?

Here are my initial fabric pulls, minus the whites.  I've changed some of them and added a few more to others.  The greens are the only thing that hasn't changed. I'm struggling with the pale aqua and the lighter blue color. The lousy pictures were all taken in my fabric closet.





I'll try to remember to take updated pictures of my fabric selections once I finalize them more.

Oh, I forgot to share this apron I helped my daughter make last week.  The fabric is actually Pokemon, though from a distance it looks a bit floral.  She's taking a cooking class, which is what she needed the apron for, and a sewing class this trimester.
And finally, if you've been following along over the years with my iron saga, I thought my iron was dying.  So I brought the nice clothes iron downstairs to try.  It didn't heat either.  So then I tried running them on a heavy-duty extension cord.  It was a little better, so I thought maybe my small, household cord was bad. Right now the best thing seems to be just plugging the iron directly into the wall, though I wish the cord was longer. Who knows??

FQS Mystery BOM 2013 Finished!

Here's one for the finally finished category.  This is the Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery Block of the Month from 2013.  Yes, 2013.  I made all the blocks that year, but then dragged my feet on piecing the borders.  I pieced them at a retreat in 2016, then put the thing away until I felt like quilting it.

I pulled it out this summer to quilt after I added the robotics to my long arm.  At that point in time, I paid my son to rip off the borders because the top was really wavy.  After redoing the borders, I quilted it.  It was one of my first robotics projects so it's not the greatest quilting job.  I recall that I was thinking I could have quilted the thing by hand a lot faster than it went on the robotics.  It took hours and hours. On the plus side, just a few months later, I can totally see what I should have done to make it turn out better.

So, anyway.  I quilted it and sewed on the binding in June and didn't start sewing down the binding until October.  I got the binding done pretty quickly and finished it up late on November 1.

Fabrics are Avalon by Fig Tree Quilts.  Blocks are by lots of people, courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop.  The quilting is called Garland.  The finished size is 70" x 84.5".





This is #2 on my 2019 FAL Q4 list.  I have 2 of my 15 projects (13.3%) finished.

Linking with For the love of geese.

One Monthly Goal November

In an effort to finish all the things, I've decided to join in on the One Monthly Goal this month.  My November goal is to finish at least the top for the Pink Grapefruit quilt by Coleen Merte.  

I am taking a class with her through one of my local guilds this week.  I am not quite done with the required precutting--I have more white pieces to cut.  The seed shapes will be cut during class.  Those will be the solid blue and solid green fabrics.  Fabrics are Kona white, unknown green text, green polka dot from JoAnn, Architextures Blueprint text by Carolyn Friedlander, plants by Paula & Waffle for Dear Stella (one of my favorite prints ever), Velvet Sky Netorious by Cotton + Steel, green with arrows Greatest Adventure from Riley Blake, Moda kelly, and Moda sapphire.  Oh, and unknown green print.  The backing will be the plant print.  Unsure on the binding; think I want to wait and see it all done first.
Also, you may be able to tell from the fabrics in this picture that I am once again going to need a new iron.  For the last 3-4 years, I have purchased the same Shark iron three times.  The first one malfunctioned and literally melted down.  The second one quit heating, as has the third one.  One of them the cord went bad too.  Can't remember if it was the first or second.  I don't feel super bad about this since they are only $25, though it is disappointing that a product would have such a short lifespan.  And I feel a lot better spending $25 rather than $100 on something that only lasts a year.  But still.

I feel like it's time for a change of iron model, but I'm stumped as to what to buy.  I don't use steam, so that's not an important feature to me.  I know I don't want cordless and I don't want something that's super heavy.  What's your favorite iron?