Quiltville Mystery Season: The Reveal Is Out!

Well fellow Quiltville mystery fans, it looks like this year's season is now done!  Bonnie has posted the final part of the mystery and the new quilt has been revealed! 

I won't spoil it for you: go on over to here to see what the final quilt looks like.  While you're there, pick up the finishing details for Part 9 and other parts you may have missed since she doesn't say in the post how long the mystery links will stay up.  Bonnie is headed out of town so if you have questions you better ask them fast!  She will be flying out to Los Angles on Tuesday to pick up her flight to Australia so may be out of touch for a while.  

BTW, if you've ever been curious about just how many mysteries Bonnie has done and when they premiered, check out this Facebook link where you can download a list (in Word format) of all the mysteries up to 2023.  

As for me, despite the fact that I had planned to have only one thing to focus on for this year's mystery season, I never got a chance to get to it!  I should have known that when I picked up Part 7 and in the instructions those that are doing this one had to start combining units that were constructed in the earlier parts, things were getting close to a finish.   I had hoped today's post wouldn't be the last and I might finally start layering my "En Provence".  

As I noted before, I had finished the top all the way back in 2018 and made up the backing in 2023.  In the first post I did about "Old Town",  I talked about how you don't have to color the mystery quilts the same way Bonnie does.  While my "En Provence" followed her color cues to the letter, check out this one that took a really innovative approach to the color choices and placement.  Even Bonnie didn't recognize it as her design at first!

Now that the mystery season has passed and the New Year is underway,  I have other priorities afoot so I think I will just stash this one once again and wait for another opportunity to work on it.  Although I want to more frequently work on quilting my quilts this year,  I still don't have even a "concept of a plan" for quilting this one since that was supposed to be determined when I layered it.  

Speaking of other priorities,  I also didn't get to the binding for the Steering Committee quilt that I finished quilting on Wednesday.

So with the mystery quilt layering now off the agenda,  I can focus on the binding task today -- that is after I get the laundry done.   After binding that one, I think I will also pull out the fabrics for the next Committee quilt and start work on that layout.  

The other priority with an immediate deadline is that I want to finally work on a friend's memory quilt.  Her and her husband have birthdays in February and I've already gotten him a gift so if I could finish her quilt that would be hers.  I know I'm not usually good with such tight deadlines but I might as well start pushing organizing myself to get better at that for 2025!   I think with the right amount of focus,  I could finally get this project done.  Another goal for 2025 is to move a lot of things off the back burner so getting that project done would be ideal.  

So posting this now then heading out to do laundry and then I can spend the evening binding.  Sounds like a plan!

7 Days of New Year's - Day 7: Happy New Year!!

    

Image by starline @ www.freepik.com

A very Happy New Year to everyone!  Here's hoping that we all have another fruitful year doing the things we love with and for the people we love!

Today marks the end of another  "7 Days" series.  I wasn't able to work on anything or post for Day 6.  DH was off from work so we took the opportunity to make an early run to the warehouse clubs and the supermarket.  Once back home, we needed to defrost and reorganize our auxiliary freezer to fit all the stuff we brought home.  The rest of the day and night was spent fielding calls or texts with New Year's wishes and watching the annual "Thin Man" movies and "Odd Couple" marathons so crafting was knocked off the list of activities for the day!  

And although DH is still off from work today, I'm hoping to start off the year the way I want it to continue: by working on moving some more projects either forward or to a finish!   I had originally planned to try to work on quilting a quilt for Day 6.  For the past few months I've had these three sitting on the back of my sewing table:

The front two (Steering Committee Gift #2 and "Over and Down Under") are partially quilted.  The back one ("Roaring Waves") is layered and pin basted.  The problem with that one is that I am still struggling with deciding on how to quilt it.  

I was tempted to continue the quilting on "Over and Down Under" which is the furthest along.  However, when I last stitched on it, I was still having some issues quilting it with the monofilament thread I was using on top.  Also because I used a National Parks panel in the backing of it,  I really wanted to complete it along with the blocks I started for Pat Sloan's "Ode to Our National Parks" Block Wednesday sew along.  So I think I'll leave both of those projects to work on at another time.  

So resuming the quilting on the "Steering Committee Quilt" it is!   I do have a good reason and incentives for getting this one finished now.  First is that I am not sure why I stopped in the first place!  I had picked out a “square loops” motif that is sometimes also called “circuit board” that I think was influenced by all the squares and rectangles of the piecing:

I thought it was one of those "mindless" designs that really shouldn't have been hard to execute but then I think I got "into my head" as I worked on it.  Looking back at my journal on this project, I see that I had originally made it to be a second raffle quilt to offer for our Art Show in 2023.  However, I was "down to the wire" trying to finish it up so was "stress stitching" and of course got frustrated when it wasn't stitching out as quickly as hoped.  Someone once said to me I must have a lot of patience to make quilts but obviously they aren't around to see me when it comes time to quilt them, LOL!!  Once I gave up on meeting the deadline, it got pushed aside to work on more immediately needed projects.  

Back in August last year (feels odd to say that right now!) when I attended the "Free Motion Quilting Summit"  virtual workshop series, one of the instructors demonstrated this very same stitch pattern.  Watching someone else do it, I was reminded that it really wasn't that difficult a stitch pattern and vowed to get back to it.  I put it on the schedule a couple of times and even took it down with me to try to stitch on while visiting my MIL in October.  Unfortunately, things have been busy up until now so it's finally time to make good on that vow.

The incentive for getting this one done is that this quilt is part of two quilt series:  one is that it is another of my now favorite "9 Fat Quarter Disappearing Nine Patch" quilts.  After discovering this easy piecing design, I've finished two, one of which was the one raffled off and won by one of the members of my community garden's Steering Committee.  Since it had been in my plans for a while to make a quilt for each of them,  now that one of them already had one,  I was prompted to get in gear on making the remaining ones.  I already have FQ bundles picked out and organized for the other three I need to make.  So getting this one done would be an incentive to then get the others pieced up, quilted and hopefully gifted before our Spring season starts in March.  

So that's the plan for today! Oh, that and baking the new set of peanut butter cookies to mail in my MIL's package tomorrow.   Here's hoping that you have plans for working on things that will start you off in the direction you want to head for this new year! 

8:30 PM Update:  Quilting Is Done!  

Guess there is something to be said for taking a break from a project.  Will try to bind it tomorrow.