Orange Crush Step 3

Well step 3 is done, but for me it was not as easy as it sounded. I had a hard time with these half blocks, don't know why. After a nice round with my seam ripper they are complete. I must have had brain freeze or something.

First are the blocks for the Mystery Quilt with whites and off whites as the lights. Most of my darks are medium to darks with more mediums since this is what I tend to buy.

I have had a few requests to also show the blocks for the pink as light quilt, so here they are as well.

This is for the friend I mentioned who is a cancer survivor. I actually like how these are turning out better. All of the darks in these blocks are brights. I may have to buy some yardage for the next steps, but I am waiting to see what the next step is.

Finally here are some fun pieces I picked up over the weekend. Our local quilt shop had a $4.00 per yard sale. I would have bought more, but I can never make a quick decision under stress and it was definitely crowded and a little stressful. I am loving the orange.

That's it for now. Thanks to everyone who leaves comments.

Donna

"Wild' Flowers

Finally finished. I LOVE this quilt, although I know it may be a little too wild to appeal to everyone. This is a variation of a quilt I saw in a Kaffe Fassett book called Passionate Patchwork.

I collected the florals over a few months and really enjoyed putting this together. As you can see it was very easy.

Then like a lot of my projects it sat in my closet for a couple of years waiting for borders and then quilting. I plan to put this on my bed for a summer quilt.

I am working away on Step 2 for the pink version of the Mystery Quilt. I hope to have those blocks finished before Step 3 is posted Monday.

Have fun.

Donna

Orange Crush Step 2

Well the step two blocks are done for the Orange Crush Mystery. I still need to do the step two blocks for the second quilt with the pinks. These blocks ended up being easier than they looked. The Easy Angle definitely helps the blocks to be the correct size, but what really helped was Bonnie's Fudge Factor Hint to match the outside corners of the large triangle and let the center seam gap a little on the pieced side. This little bit of cheating seemed to make the difference. Let's just hope that none of my seams pull apart.

I have a lot of mediums compared to most of the other photos in the Yahoo group. Hope that the pattern shows up well in the finished quilt.

I have been diligently cutting scraps into 3.5", 2.5" and 2" strips. Also started a box of strings and a box of crumbs. This is a big change from my former scrap system which just kind of threw everything in a bin based upon color. It was fun to see all the old fabrics I have made quilts from, some even from the first quilt I made 8 years ago.

I have continued to play with the crumb blocks. The block with blue sashing leaves 1/2" between blocks. The block with yellow sashing leaves 1/4" between blocks. I think I prefer the 1/4" right now, although it is a lot harder to sew since there are so many seams in a little area.

Thanks for stopping by. Love it when you leave comments.

Donna

Changed my Mind

After viewing the baby quilt picture I decided it needed something else so I added the sashing. It looks better to me now than it did without sashing. I bought the border print for this quilt today. It was 20% off at the Mystery sale. Bought some fat quarters too. I will post pics of those later.

My Orange Crush step 2 triangles are half done. Maybe finish tonight while watching the baseball game on tv.

Donna

Progress??????

Well I had great intentions of 2008 being the year that I finished up a lot of my UFOs. While making some progress there, it is an indisputable fact that I love to start new projects much more than I love to finish up old ones.

Now that I have discovered Bonnie's wonderful site I am feeling less guilty about starting new projects. After all I am just using scraps aren't I?

So here are some updates of what I have been working on.

The baby quilt only needs borders at this point. I don't have anything in my stash that works well enough, so I will need to buy some yardage for that and the backing as well. One of the LQS here is having a "mystery sale" tomorrow, so I will be checking that out!

Then I thought I would practice some more with the easy angle ruler, so I started this layout. I think this is from Quiltville's Leaders and Enders instructions. I really love the scrappy look. It certainly brings back a lot of memories of quilts made for freinds and family when I have been cutting up these scraps.

I have started step 2 of the Orange Crush Mystery as well, but just barely. I am finding it a little challenging to use the Easy Angle on the smaller 2" strips, so I have to go very slowly so as not to have any cutting accidents. Here's the lonely 4 patches waiting patiently for the next step.



I even messed around with the Crumbs, crumbs, crumbs instructions from Bonnie's website.

This is fun too. Kind of mindless sewing while I was watching tv. I have thrown out a lot of crumbs over the last few years.

And finally, so you don't think I am doing all this work on my own, here hard at work is my crackerjack assistant and harshest critic, Benji the dog.

Happy Quilting,

Donna

"So I Think I Need a Quilt for a Baby Shower, Maybe"

Those are the words I was greeted with yesterday by my daughter. Unfortunately the conversation did not offer much more clarification after that.

At least she knew the shower was for her cheerleading coach. "When is it?" "The 18th" she replied. "April or May?" Not sure. "Who is organizing this?" Not sure. "Where is it?" Not sure.... and on we go.

So anyway, since I was going to make a baby quilt for the coach anyway, I thought I might as well get started. It gives me a chance to play with the Easy Angle we will be using in the Orange Crush Mystery Quilt since I am using half square triangles in the baby quilt.

In the past I have always drawn the line down the middle of two layered squares and then sewn 1/4" away on each side. The Easy Angle is nice, but I am finding the bias stretches a lot. I have to put a pin at the trailing end of each set in order to have them stay together through the presser foot. We'll see how it goes. It definitely is faster.

Here's the direction I am going in. The fabric is mostly Zippee Jungle from Clothworks with some scraps thrown in. The baby is a girl so I wanted a little pink. I will need some type of sashing I think. Maybe black and white? ...Not sure......

Purse and Pink Squares

Well I tried a couple of new things this week. The first is this purse from the book Patchwork with Pizzazz by Lise Bergene. I like how it turned out. Next time I will use some interfacing or maybe a stiffer batting to make it stand up a little better, but it was fun to make.

Then I decided to go ahead and make the second set of 4 patch blocks for Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery quilt. This is for a birthday gift for a dear friend who is a two time breast cancer survivor. I am not sure about these yet, but we'll see if step two of the mystery helps them out. If you look at the Quilt Pink Magazine there are a lot of colors mixed well with pink. I am not sure what I will use for the four accent colors on this one. Probably bright pink for one of them. Maybe a bright yellow also. Any suggestions?

Donna

Mystery Quilt Step 1

Well thanks to a lot of determination from Tracy , I am in the Mystery Quilters Ring, and excited to be here. I finished the step one blocks last night.

Here they are waiting to have the little center seam pinwheeled open. I like to do this so that they will lie flat for me. They look like a fuzzy caterpillar to me.

Now pressed open and pinned together. I made a few extra, not knowing what the layout will look like.

I am looking forward to step 2. I think I am going to try making another version with pink as the light and all brights for the darks. I need a birthday gift for a friend who is a breast cancer survivor, but she is not the 100% pink type. We'll see.

Donna