Quilting Progress

Winter's Night Mystery Quilt

This has been a very busy week in my quilt studio! One of my major accomplishments was the completed quilting on the Winter's Night Mystery Quilt. This was a New Year's mystery, sponsored by Longarm University. The quilt was pieced ahead of time and the quilting was revealed bit by bit on New Year's Day. I actually completed a different quilt on New Year's, but I've been working on this one off and on ever since and this week I finally buckled down and finished all the quilting, removed it from the frame and bound it! Now I just need to get Charles to rig up some kind of a quilt hanger so I can put it up and admire it!

For my mother's upcoming 80th birthday in March, I'm making her Eleanor Burns' Egg Money Quilt. There are 12 blocks and each one is different. This was the first one I completed, Grandmother's Flower Garden. It's a bit of a cheater block, since the hexagons are just each one piece of fabric. But it was quick to finish and then I was able to move on to the next block:

I think this one is Road to California. I made the flying geese the way Eleanor Burns teaches and they came out perfect. This block was fairly quick and easy to piece too. But then I started the next one:

This block is called Turkey Tracks and I have to admit that it was a bit challenging, but it was also fun and turned out very pretty. It has multiple set-in seams and I had to do a little ripping as I went, but not too much.

I'm trying to get 3 blocks made each week on this quilt so I can get it together and finished long before Mom's birthday. Fortunately, she doesn't know I have a blog, so I can write about my progress on her quilt here!

Easy Street Mystery Quilt

This is my other great accomplishment this week--I finally put all the blocks together in my Easy Street mystery quilt! I had to lay the blocks out on the floor, but it actually all went together quite quickly and well. I was very careful about how I pressed my seams and it helped so much when I was joining them together. I'm just so thankful that I was able to piece this quilt, put the blocks together and sew the rows without making any mistakes or having to do any ripping (I only say that, now that it's all done!)

However...if you notice the dark spots on the round looking sections of the blocks? I didn't have a real good selection of green fabrics to choose from and one of them that I decided to use was a "green pea" fabric, you know, like the green peas that you eat. Well, I didn't realized how much darker the pea fabric was than all the others until the blocks were all made.and at that point, I wasn't about to undo all that work. So that's what's so dark on the quilt blocks. And now when I put this on my bed, I'll just announce that we'll be sleeping 'under the peas" that night!

Next week I'll be adding just a narrow purple border to this Easy Street quilt and then it will be ready for quilting! I'm hoping by next weekend, this whole project will be done, but we'll see.