The Mystery is now a flimsy

2014 NYD Mystery quilt top is a flimsy. I am linking up with A Lovely Year of Finishes with this quilt top finish as my January goal ~ link to blog post. Link up # 181. Update: This baby is quilted!!!

After a few block layout changes plus I decided to add borders, this top is ready to be quilted! Notice I couldn't do the misfit layout of the original.

Quilting on my New Year's Day Mystery quilt

I am quite pleased with this one, you never know how a mystery will turn out! All the fabrics are pulled from stash scraps and FQ's except the light print in the large HSTs are cut from two half yard pieces that came from Honey Run Quilters. Many of the fabrics are left overs from Petit Fours, a quilt I made from a kit from Morning Star Quilts. Barbara, a new quilt customer recently brought her Petit Fours that she recently finished that I will quilt for her. When she unfolded her quilt top I immediately knew the quilt! Nice surprise!!

Petit Fours made in 2010

This is a pic of my Petit Fours made in 2010 for my friend Suzanne. The left over border print is in most of the blocks in the Mystery quilt top and more scraps I added to the Anvil blocks.

My goal this year is to use up stash and I think I got a pretty good start on that one :0) Another is to start blocks on a 2014 Barbara Brackman ~ Threads of Memory BOM and do a QAL with Lori of Humble Quilts. Both of them posted the first blocks, Lori yesterday and Barbara this morning on her Civil War blog. Check out the links. Off to sew as I have blocks to make this weekend!!!

Enjoy your weekend! Thanks for stopping by

 Jo

NYD Mystery progress

Making progress on the New Year's Day mystery. My January goal for a Lovely Year of Finishes is to finish the top to a flimsy.  Was going for a quilted finish except I may be in between longarms. ;0~) Sold my longarm and have another on the way. Will see how the timing works out on that. Happy dancing!

Anyway, all my blocks for the mystery are made and up on the design wall...

Not the final as I moved a few blocks after looking at this pic. Love using digital photography to view the layout before sewing rows together. It's amazing what you see in placement, especially value. I squared the large HST's that alternate with the Anvil blocks yesterday.

This week I received an email from Linda of Little Bits and Pieces. I won her giveaway for the paperback The Double Wedding Ring by Clare O'Donohue. It's a romance murder mystery and quilting :0)  Thank you Linda, it arrived in yesterday's mail while I was squaring my blocks :0)

I am loaning my new book to my quilting friend Beckie. She is recovering from leg surgery and is going crazy laid up with a brace on her right leg, her sewing and driving foot! The book will be perfect, she loves to read romance and mysteries and this is both. We also started a fussy cut English paper piecing hexie project this week. Hi Beckie, hope you are doing better today! 

It's halftime for the first game of the playoffs today, Denver is ahead. Omaha!
San Fransisco plays Seattle this afternoon. (Pic below is a quilt made by Donna, my and Beckie's friend. I quilted it for her with a football panto. The wool batting adds a nice loft. All three of us use it now and love it!)

Go 49ers! 

Enjoy your day!!!

ASQG Clinic

Saturday Annie's Star Quilt Guild in Chico, CA held our January workshop. The workshop committee put together a very creative program. Gail and Michelle set up a 'Health Clinic' for quilts! There were 6 'Clinicians' on duty to receive 'patients'.  Patients were required to fill in their Quilters Medical History form and everyone received a first aid kit when they arrived for their 9:30 am appointment. Each clinician alternated sessions at one hour intervals and patients could choose which area they felt was needed to make their quilts feel better :0)

This is Judy (right) and Millie holding up Judy's quilt made for her Curved Piecing clinic. Millie held a clinic on Binding tips. I learned a new trick sitting in on her clinic but didn't get into Judy's as it was packed for each session! Curved piecing must have the flu bug that is going around!

Judy, CS our Curved Specialist

Nancy, DQS ~ Domestic Quilting Specialist

Nancy with Chris taking a close look

Nancy demonstrated Free Motion Quilting. Some of us are learning and others got a prescription on how to improve our skills! She had some great tips!

 Beth, EP our expert Embroidery Practitioner!

Beth, EP above... and Joyce, our Veterinarian and Flying Geese Specialist! with her assistant Linda

Joyce shared different ways to make flying geese patches that turn out perfect! I sat in on this one because my Flying Geese are always sick. Well no more! One of Joyce's tutes was a true Aha Ha moment!

Grace and Bonnie held a clinic on Triangles. I missed getting a pic while they were in session but you can see their board in the upper left corner of the last pic.

All in all it was a great way to learn tips and tricks from our specialists! We had a delicious pot luck lunch, thank you to everyone that brought the tasty goodies from soups to desserts! Yummm! followed by show and tell...

Lynn with her smokin' HOT new truck!

Brandie with her Tree of Paradise that she is working on

LOVE how Brandie has appliqued her tree trunks and the roots form a flower or a four leaf clover. Her husband says it's a propeller! MY DH thinks the same, must be a guy thing! btw, that's Brandie of ABC. We are both working on Tree of Life quilts.  

Nicki with her newest quilt top

There were patients that brought along their sick and ailing quilts that needed some TLC from Grace, our expert, teacher and problem healer! I know two quilts that really benefited!

After lunch we held a Longarm Forum with a panel of three longarm quilters. We shared information from longarm terminology and how prepare a quilt for a longarmer to batting and thread choices. Followed with Q&A. We are a fortunate group to live in an area with many talented longarmers and businesses to choose from. Four of our local quilt shops offer longarm quilting services as well as several home based business with a range of styles and services.     

One more session was held so that everyone had a chance to visit one more clinic. Cleaned up and the clinic closed at 3:30. It was a wonderful day!!!

January and a New Year of Goals

Goals for January~
First up is the New Year's Day Mystery that I started on that day. My friend Janie joined me and she is making one too. Her fabrics are much different, both are scrappy. My goal is to finish this quilt top by the end of the month for a Lovely Year of Finishes. Half of the Anvil blocks are ready...

The remaining are cut, marked, ready to be sewn into HSTs and into blocks for a total of 40...

Alternating blocks are also cut, ready to mark and sew into 40 large HSTs. This is the layout:

This is my January goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes

Second is to work on the next blocks for Amaretto Cottage, a BOM that Janie and I are working on together. Janie is using the fabrics sent with the kit. I am pulling from my CW stash. We are on Block 5 and working at our own pace (Originally a 2012 BOM) My first four blocks...

and this week I made my log cabin blocks for month 5... 

Eight plus four corner blocks for a total of 12. Love that gold and cheddar Jo Morton fabric!

These are Janie's first blocks in her fabrics...

She is coming by today to finish her log cabin blocks and share our progress on the NYD Mystery. 

Third is to work on the design of my Tree of Life quilt and finish this top too!...

Center field is finished. Adding more HSTs for a pieced inner border. Outer border to be added in the red fabric. Almost a flimsy, then it will be set aside until I have my second longarm set up and ready to go! I am so excited!!! 

Which brings me another goal for 2014... to get to know my new machine (once it arrives :0) again, so exciting! Looking forward to working on and improving my machine quilting skills. There is so much beautiful machine quilting being done by some amazing quilters, I want to learn as much as I possibly can. Practice, practice and then practice some more! 

One new 2014 BOM I am doing for sure is Barbara Brackman's 2014 BOM Threads of Memory. Each block will be posted the last Saturday of the month on her Civil War blog. 

The Mystery quilt is my goal for a finish in January for A Lovely Year of Finishes with Bitter Sweet Designs. I really enjoyed the motivation to finish UFOs last year with Carrie at A Passion for Applique.  I would be sew very happy to finish 12 projects in 2014!!!

What are your goals? 

Enjoy a New Year!

New Year's Day Mystery

New Year's Day Janie and I had a wonderful time working on the Mystery quilt from Planet Patchwork.  An Oldie But Goodie is the name given to this quilt project. Here is an image of the top from their website.

 Dianne, the designer for this project made some changes in the layout on purpose as she based this quilt project on an old quilt she found. To quote her...

The basis for this design is an antique quilt top that followed me home one day.  Unfortunately, the dark brown and black fabrics were flaking away as I held it up to admire it.  I decided it was too far gone to try to restore it, so the next best thing was to attempt to recreate it with new fabrics.

You might notice that a few of the Anvil blocks have been turned in the “wrong” direction, which is exactly how the original quilt top was made!

This is the first block we laid out, it's called Anvil... turns out there are two blocks that will be alternated. The second is the large HST which we had cut but that's as far as that got :0)

There was more eating, football and visiting than sewing which meant we didn't keep up let alone finish our tops, but we had fun and it was a great way to start the New Year!

Question... for the layout, turn some of the blocks in the wrong direction as Dianne did in order to reproduce the original quilt top? Or go with the traditional layout? Which would you do?

It was very nice to have some time off for the holidays.  This weekend will be more football with the Pro playoffs while I finish blocks for this quilt as well as two more quilt projects I have in the works. Amaretto Cottage and a Tree of Life quilt. Monday will be back to work longarm quilting quilts promised 'after' the holidays :0)

Enjoy your weekend! Thanks for checking in

Looking forward to a new year and finding out what you all are up to :0)