Flying Geese on the Lake

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, another Bonnie Hunter Quiltville Mystery Quilt is now under my needle, this time On Ringo Lake from 2018.  She had me at the photos -- it reminds me so much of Otsego Lake.


                         Bonnie's Ringo Lake at dawn --->






My photo doesn't show the dock and boat, but we have those, two, in the same configuration.

Otsego Lake, Michigan, at sunset

I had planned to work on this as a leader-and-ender project, with serious sewing happening only at my Thursday morning quilt group.  Lots and lots of small pieces to sew and no big rush to finish.  (Although I do hope to finish it in less than the 5-1/2 years it took to finish Easy Street).  However, I've run up against an unexpected "problem."  The only must-make quilt on my sewing table is a panel, so no need for leaders/enders there.  And every other UFO is something waiting to be quilted.  So I've managed to complete four of the clues and have cut the fabric for a 5th.  There are eight clues altogether, but only seven that are start-from-scratch units; the rest are putting units together.

You already saw the first units, teal/neutral/brown 9-patches - 50 in all.  I was able to  complete these almost entirely from my stash, buying just a few teal fat quarters to add variety.

Next up:  Coral and Neutral Flying Geese

As I've complained mentioned before, flying geese have given me a lot of trouble in the past, mainly because I tend to tug and pull at the pieces.  Over time, I've learned to make them using the no-waste, 4-at-a time method, cutting down immensely both cutting time and bias-edge handling, and no special ruler required.  There are many good tutorials out there.

Those little triangles are from a different unit, but I'll sew them together to make a million teensy-weensy HSTs!

Into each life some rain must fall.  Note to self:  don't leave those little triangles sitting near your sewing machine.  They have a tendency to sneak around and pop up in unusual places!  Oops!

Another wonderful addition to my quilting toolbox is this scant-quarter-inch foot for my Featherweight!  I was tired of having to put painter's tape and bits of old hotel keys and library cards on my machines to mark out 1/4".  Plus, they do no good when you have to sew a quarter-inch from a line, rather than from an edge.  The Featherweight Shop posted a video comparing four kinds of quarter-inch feet -- very useful!  I bought the one that sews a scant 1/4".  It has a narrow blade that you use to follow your marked line.  It really helped with both precision and accuracy.

Done!  200 flying geese!

I did have to buy almost all the coral fabric that I'd need (two other clues use it, too), as it's not a color I use much and so had very little in my stash.  This can be expensive!  For this quilt I needed 3-1/4 yds. of the coral, 15-1/2 yds. of fabric altogether.  About 25% of all this fabric ends up in the many, many seams.  Add in the batting, the backing, the thread, and weeks of your time.  Yow!

Petey's Quilt

I 💔  Baby Quilts!

I've been wanting to share this quilt with you for a while.  The quilt was done in record time, but I shipped it off before I remembered to take photos.  

My grandson Peter was born last September, my son's first son, so of course I wanted his quilt to be special.  But I also wanted it to be quick -- his two big sisters both had to wait a year for their quilts.  😬  Of course, you can guess how that went...
























I started with a charm pack featuring garbage trucks and other "things that go" (blue and orange, yay!) and jumped right into my go-to baby quilt, a disappearing 9-patch in a traditional layout.  I fiddled with the squares to maximize the variation in both color and pattern in each block.

Have I showed you my "design wall" before?  My husband didn't want anything permanent on the wall, so I rigged up this beauty -- squares of Velcro sewed along the edge of a piece of flannel, and the matching counterparts stuck to the top of the moulding on the closet doors.  It's not nice and flat, (hence, "wall" in quotes) and using it usually requires some pinning, but in general it does the trick.

Once it was sewn and cut up, I took it in to my Thursday morning quilt group (and the LQS's sturdy design wall) to fiddle some more.  As always, I wanted to line the blocks up so that there would be no seam-matching until the final rows were sewn together.   (Note to self: it probably would be just as easy and maybe faster just to ignore this compulsion and match the seams). 

Next step:  the backing.  You know how I feel about that (remember this post?).  I found this perfect fabric at my LQS (Riverhead Vac and Sew).  Sorry, the lighting was the best...

My daughter-in-law lived for a decade in Brooklyn, so the New York City vibe fit right in.  Plus, I'm a geographer, so the whole map thing made me happy.  Unfortunately, I realized after I started working with the fabric that it was limited to Manhattan only.  Well, that's OK.  We have family in New Jersey, and we're on Long Island; a few signs should do the trick.

I see Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels in this baby's future!

I did a diamond pattern with my walking foot in the border, but decided to "walk" around the streets of NYC for the rest of the quilting.  This required a LOT of twisting and turning of the quilt, but I (kind of) enjoyed the challenge of figuring out what route to take in each section and how to start and end at a bridge so that I didn't need to break thread.  I'm pretty happy with the way the quilting looks on the front of the quilt, entirely random from that perspective.

At 7 months, Petey isn't exactly into his quilt yet, but I'm sure the time will come.