January ends on a Quiltville note with a dash of cross stitch

As January drew to an end, I worked on pulling a bunch of Quiltville projects closer to the finish line.  "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll", Bonnie Hunter's 2010 mystery (and now in her book "String Fling"), was my project to work on during the mystery season while the new "Chilhowie" mystery debuted.  The last time I posted about this,  "Chilhowie" had been revealed and I was still trying to finish up the string blocks which I continued to work on this month until they were done.

Then the next step was to trim them up.

The last step for this part of this mystery was to split the string squares in half and sew them into quarter square blocks and triangle pairs.  

All trimmed up and de-papered!

The squares will be the alternate blocks in the layout, the pairs will be the side setting triangles and the single triangles will be used for the corner setting triangles.  

I've worked on these string squares and the other parts of this mystery in fits and starts since I started on this project at the end of 2018.  With this big step completed, I now have just about all the parts needed to make the blocks and pieced border for the quilt.

I did say "just about" because the only parts left to finish sewing up are those red and neutral HSTs in the front.  They are then sewn up into five piece strips that will border the block centers.  I've started on those and will continue to use them as leader/enders as I sew up the blocks or work on other projects.  

This project is my APQ UFO Challenge project for this month so while I had hoped to finish the top,  I am happy I was able to at least move it a big step forward.  I still have hope that this project could finally become a flimsie at some point this year!  

In other old mystery news:  back in November when the "Chilhowie" mystery began, I had said I hoped during the mystery season to get the backing made up for my "En Provence" mystery top that was finished back in 2018.  Getting it done this month was a case of "better late than never"!    

The finished backing with a space for the label....

...for this top.

It's another pieced mystery quilt backing and was easier to do than expected.  I had always thought I was going to be piecing together the leftover scraps from making the top to make up the back.  However, when I pulled out the stash in December, I found that I had forgotten I had purchased a big hunk of discounted fabric as a potential backing option.  So it was simpler to just piece a label strip and some scrappy squares together into a width-of-quilt strip.  Put that between two big swaths of backing fabric and I could call it done!

Now I have four Quiltville mysteries ready to be layered and quilted.  I do have some other projects that really need to get done so it may be a while before I can schedule a Quiltville-Quilting-Quilt-a-thon!

In other Quiltville project news: I am also still working on the last of the red & white Christmas (now Valentine's Day) quilts to be pieced:  Bonnie's "Cherry Crunch" design.  When I last reported on this one, I had sub-cut all the string strips that had also been foundation pieced during the "Chilhowie" mystery season.

I've spent the month adding triangles to the corners.

Now I have to make blocks with the units.

This will be another project that I can use as a leader/ender until I can get it to a top.

Lastly, a cross stitch update:  I was hoping to get this little cross stitch piece finished (but not fully finished!) before month's end and I just made it under the wire!

This is "The Year of the Rabbit" by The Frosted Pumpkin in honor of the Chinese New Year.  

Lessons learned on this one:  I had to rip a large section I had stitched because I was off by a thread in positioning.  After all, they call it "counted cross stitch" so counting properly is important!  In hindsight, I should have used a cream floss for the lower part of the rabbit's face and his paws when stitching on white Aida fabric rather than the white floss I had in my stash.  In the future, I'll remember that just like in quilting, good contrast matters!   This is only my third cross stitch finish so I am happy I was able to get more practice and complete it.

I've already picked out finishing fabrics from a stash I have.  That of course gave me a chance to review the quilt projects I had stashed them for in the first place, LOL!!.  I also have some ideas for how I want to finish this for display.  I hope not to sit on it too long though as I have a Valentine's themed WIP from last year that I want to finish and fully finish for February.