Two Rows out of Seven

 

I'm switching back over to the Lupine Mystery quilt. Time to sew all those blocks together.

These go together pretty easily, not a lot of seam /point matching.

The first row (on the bottom) is done! Wow, does that ever shrink up. It always surprises me.

I moved around a few blocks, before sewing more together. But can you even tell?

That's two rows done, five more to go.

Stars+Alternates

Here's the whole stack of to-be-sewn together "twenty alternate blocks" for the Lupine Mystery quilt.And here's the final block assembled right after ironing.

Well, here they all are together, the Lupine Stars and the "alternate blocks". This us not an intentional arrangement, I just slapped them up as they were pressed.

woohoooooo.

Now to play around with the arrangement until I like what I see.

All The Stars

 

The last five Lupine Stars are now done.

Here's one of my favorites.

And another one.

Twenty-five Lupine Stars all together. This would make a nice quilt, I like that secondary pattern a lot.

I pushed myself and made five of the "alternate blocks", to add to the one I'd done before, just to see how it would change....And wow! What a difference that alternate block makes in the took of the quilt. Twenty more of those to assemble. This is going to be fun to play around with the final layout.

Ten More Lupine Stars

 

Ten more Lupine Stars are done and up on the wall.

They're hanging out with the first ten that I made and the one lonely "alternate" block.

Only five more to assemble!

Alternate Lupine Block

I had all the ingredients out, so I made one of the "alternate" blocks (ie not a Lupine Star) for the Lupine Mystery quilt. Just to see how one of them looked. I like it a lot, it's very different than the star block.

 Here's how it will look with all the Lupine Stars. It's a very cool secondary pattern. 

I even went through the Ohio Stars and the Kitty Ears and HSTs to match them up so that none of the fabrics are repeated in each block. And to make sure the colors and prints worked together in each block. It's quite a stack, isn't it?

Now they're all ready to sew once I'm done with the Lupine Stars which are also all laid out. Okay, back to all the block assembly sewing left to do.

Final Lupine Border

 The joined-up Flying Geese are now further joined together into the four final borders for the Lupine Mystery quilt. It took a lot of counting to make sure I had the correct number sewn together. 

I think it'll be a really nice-looking final border, especially once I make the four corner blocks. It's kind of funny to have the final border done before I've gotten the main part of the quilt put together.

Joined Geese

 

Sew Day was great yesterday, there was an excellent turnout, and many fun conversations. I also managed to get a lot of sewing done. 

I sewed together all of the many many Flying Geese units I had previously made for the Lupine Mystery. 

I also got to assist Kathy with sewing the embroidered labels that she makes for our guild to use for Community Giving quilts. I sewed these short seams in-between the block units.

I followed the great pressing instructions, half of the units pressed toward the pink goose, half towards the white goose.

And then I had quite a time (see the bottom row), trying to work out why the pressing didn't work out. Probably due to not reading the instructions well and also having conversations at the same time. Sigh. So, I got many of the sewn together pairs of geese sewn to another. These will make up the outer border of the quilt top, so. I have to join up the correct number of these units. Back to re-reading the instructions!

Five Lupine Stars

 

I started putting together the Lupine stars for the Lupine Mystery quilt. So far so good.

I got five of them done, they went together very easily. As per usual the pressing directions in the pattern is very helpful for block construction. I like the look of them with the cornerstone and sashing splitting up the star.

Now that I know what I'm doing, twenty more to go doesn't seem quite as daunting.

Adding Blue

 

Okay, I think that's enough variety of blues for the last ingredients of this block. The quilt and pattern designer, Bonnie K. Hunter calls this a Lupine Star. That sounds like a good name to me. While I was cutting out the blue pieces I  tried to cut from mainly the lightest blues I had been working with for this quilt. So they're not all different as the pink block centers are, but I don't think that will matter too much once the other block that makes up this quilt gets added in-between.

Twenty-five Squares

I only managed to cut out the twenty-five 1.5" pink squares for the Lupine mystery quilt today. The good news is that I was able to get the majority of them cut out of the scraps I've been collecting as I've been going through all the clues which was easier than wrangling big pieces of fabric to cut out that tiny square.

At least I pinned them up with the block units they'll be going into on the design wall. 

Next up, the blue sashing that will go in-between the four block units. I cut out three block's worth to see how it looks. hmmm. Not too sure about that dark one.

Finished Spikies

 

The rest of the spiky star block units left to sew together was a pretty big stack.

Adding to the finished blocks up on the design wall kept me sewing.

The chain sewing was quite long, but these go together easily if you follow the pressing directions.

All they need is the final seam.

And there they all are, hurrah! Now to cut out the blue sashing and pink cornerstones that will go in between each set of four. Getting there.

Still Spiking

 

I dealt out the colors and prints for the remaining Spiky Star blocks for the Lupine Mystery and sewed most of them together.  Chain piecing style. The remaining piles to be sewn are in the foreground.

Not too many of these sets left to get together I have quite an assortment of pink, purple and "white/neutral" fabrics in these blocks. Some are great combinations, some not so much. Overall, hopefully they'll work in the quilt.

Getting Spiky

The next clue I'm working on for the Lupine Mystery quilt involves making some larger block units out of already made smaller block units. Two sizes of HSTs and the HRTs combine for this interesting almost its own block. 

I only had to un-sew one bit that I'd gotten the big HST turned the wrong way around. At least I noticed before it got sewn into the quilt, right?  Before I sewed together the next few, I set up the elements in stacks that looked like the final product.

So spiky! I love the look of all the variations in the pinks and white fabrics. These don't look so great on my white design wall. I promise they all have white fabric centers. Interesting how they visually just totally disappear. The final blocks will have the four sub-blocks with blue sashing and pink cornerstones in the centers. But those haven't been cut out yet...

So Many Kitty Ears

I buckled down and got started sewing the remaining sets of Kitty Ears units for the Lupine Mystery quilt. 

I love how these "Kitty Ears" units kind of have the look of Flying Geese gone wrong, or maybe just gone wiiiiiide.

Cutting the very last set to size with the Simple Folded Corners ruler.

It took a lot of trimming and sewing and pressing, but they got put together. Check out that pile of teeny tiny hsts™!

 But here they all are.  

Twenty-four sets of four "kitty ears" all done. You may be wondering if I had run out of white on white? No, just thought it'd be fun to put in two of my favorite white with black prints. This layout would actually make a very interesting scrap (or otherwise) quilt. Looks like columns of arrows.

  I am so very very ready to move on to the next clue.