Lupine & Laughter

It's November, so it's time for another mystery quilt. I know, I know, it's another mystery quilt, didn't I just do one of those? Yes, I did. But it's a Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt again. I know from recent experience that she has great designs, and even better instructions. As you know, I took a very very long time to finish my quilt top from last year's mystery. But I really enjoyed making it, the whole process, all the piecing, learning all the tips and tricks, and coming up with something I am very proud of completing. Yes, it's not actually a completed quilt, but the top is completed. This was the most complicated quilt top I ever tried to make, and I actually finished it. So, based on that good feeling of accomplishment, I'm going to try again this year. 

And I will admit that part of my choice is based on the great title of this year's mystery quilt, Lupine & Laughter.  And even more than that, it's the colors involved, purple is one of the main ones. I love love love purple and have plenty of purple fabrics to choose from, as you can see above in my Purple Fabric Pull.

The ice blue requirement is a bit harder for me to come up with a lot of choices, but here's what I've got so far. I may swap another color out (like friend Jaye did with her mystery quilt last year). I do want to have that blue element though, because some lupines have quite a lot of blue in them. 

Pinks won't be too much of a problem, I have plenty of those. Haven't picked them yet.

Lastly will be the neutrals, in the instructions it was called out as more white than cream and fun neutrals. I liked the ones I used in last year's mystery quilt, there were quite a few black and white ones. Maybe I'll do more of those. 

So, that's the start of the start at least. 

Patchwork Palooza #11

 

This week's Patchwork Palooza block was a pretty easy one, so I played around with different fabric choices. This one was too busy for me.

I thought this was a better look.

All done with the 11th block!

And of course the resulting teeny tiny HST's to add to my envelope.

Here's how it's looking so far, without the sashing and cornerstones as we still don't have the official measurements yet. I think it's working out color-wise so far. I may move some of the blocks around in the final version.

Blue Squares

I made some time for cutting out some blue squares for another part of another clue for the Old Town Mystery Quilt. These are going to be square in a square blocks with coral on the corners. I'm going to try the flip and sew paper piecing for these to see how accurate I can get them.

Not related at all but these are very good mints! They're more sugary than minty though, just an fyi. I got these in my stocking yesterday, and they are quite tasty, sometimes green tea flavored stuff is bleah for me. I'm honestly very excited about the container which is why I was measuring it. Will it fit something useful? I quite like the little window and the nicely rounded corners.

Old Town Choices

I've only ever finished one mystery quilt, this one above, a Weekend Whatever made in 2005 and finished in 2019. This is the year I'm finally actually going to attempt to do the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt in real time. Note the "attempt" in that previous sentence. Even though I really need a sew-a-long kind of thing right now, circumstances may potentially arise of course. I've always wanted to do one of hers as they're almost always a great sort of quilt and she presents the color choices with such nice inspiration travel photos.

First things first is picking out the fabrics that I'm going to be using. I'm going full on scrappy with mine, so there will be a lot of variety. The above are the "neutrals" that I'll be using. A mix of white and off-white to cream. Turns out I don't have enough of white on white or patterned off-white fabrics in my stash so I threw in some of the least densely black printed of the black white prints that I have on hand.

This next stack is the aqua/turquoise group. There was a lot of fabric to choose from here. Many are quite small pieces so we'll see if they will actually make it into the quilt or not, depending on the sizes that will be required. That's all a part of the mystery I guess.

Here's how the first two color groups look together. I think I'm liking it so far.

The studio assistant checked over my melon to coral choices.

Pretty melon-y and coral-ish.

Using my color wheel to narrow down the choices for the red category.

I think it worked.

Here's the giant stack all together. Now to actually move beyond this point of choosing fabrics (where I've gotten stuck before) and get to making the block components in the first clue...

Pictures of Plans

 

Alll of that new fabric has been washed and put away now, all that's left behind is a big ol' tangle of cut off thread tangles and lots of new projects to do.

It was a lot to put away, but I did take some more pictures of fabric groupings, etc. This is mostly just for reference for future projects.

I was looking more closely at some of the Tilda fabric that I'd purchased. This was a fat quarter which I hadn't unrolled in the store as it was tied. What is it about this designer that I like so much? I think it's the color palette as well as the combination of stylized yet not too abstracted flower forms with backgrounds like these polka dots. The dots are not just an impartial regimented background though, the placement of individual dots follow the shapes of the flowers instead of being in a grid.

Same idea here with the background of various sizes of ovals. and dots. This way of doing a background subtly emphasizes and also integrates the foreground figures. This is a lovely color palette as well. 

I confirmed that the chambray fat quarters that I bought will go well with the Tilda Bloomsville fabrics I'd 

gotten on a whim at the beginning of the year. 

I saw a quilt at the San Mateo County Fair that used them in a lantern pattern, which was great, but I want to do something different.  Maybe something like this big flower block pattern, so I can fussy cut the figures on the Bloomsville fabrics to be centered in the flower centers.

These are the group of proposed Medallion Quilt fabrics, with the "focus fabric" or maybe "instigating or inspiring" fabric there at the top. I've been wanting to make a medallion type of quilt for a while and SBAMQ just held a class that I almost signed up for as well. It's been fun to see what people in the class have come up with. I want to try to design one on EQ8, perhaps as a starting point, but maybe it would just help me improvise.

And finally a group picture of the embroidery threads that I bought. They don't really go together do they? Well, they're really for filling in the empty spots in my available color wheel.

9 Bohemian Wife Strips

 

A lot more of the 60 Bohemian Wife "background" strips are up on the design wall along with the 72 blocks. Nine strips to be specific, all of them cut up into the line segments required. This is feeling like a Geometry pop quiz all of a sudden. Good thing I liked Geometry as a math subject! A bunch more strips are cut out and all labeled, but I'm putting them up in order from left to right so that I don't get confused. (Or more confused)

So far, so good I think, the blocks are distinct but also blending in with the background. That was the look that I was going for, instead of having something like a calmer, all solids or read-as-solid prints look. 

It's a bit of a mess, as was expected. I mean, I wouldn't usually put these particular 34 fabrics together. Thirty four different fabrics are in just this one picture...wow. So, yeah, it's going to be A Lot when it's all together. I'm almost to the point where I can try sewing together this first section. It took a bit to get confident on the instructions that I'm using to supplement the original pattern. 

Two of Sixty Strips

I am back to working on the Bohemian Wife, all of the blocks are completed and they've been hanging out on my design wall since March. So now, it's time to do the cutting of the background strips. I've been putting it off, because this is the most complicated step and a big part of the reason I love the look of this quilt design so much. The commercial pattern is woefully inadequate to the complicated assembly scenario, but luckily there have been many sew-a-longs that have caused helpful people to make very useful spreadsheets. There really ought to be a chart like this in the printed pattern, that lists the section of the quilt, the lengths of strip required for all Sixty Strips. I think it's one of the main reasons this pattern has such a reputation for being difficult.

As I cut the segments of each strip I'm labeling them and then pinning them together. There are 10 sections total to be assembled into the quilt top...

So far I've only gotten two of the sixty strips cut out and placed with the blocks, those two on the left. It's either going to end up being a colorful riot or a riot of color, which is sort of the point.
 

To The 99th

 

Well it's down to choosing fabrics for the last three Pantone Project postcards that I've received. A total of 99 postcards have gotten to me from friend Jaye, some were delayed, nearly destroyed, many were ink stamped, etc. One is in transit some where. Maybe it'll show up at some point. Hopefully before we're ready to put together the quilt tops.

Tah-dah, The last three blocks for this project, down to the 99th.

A closeup of the blocks and the fabric choices I ended up going with.

And now over to a really great group of blocks that friend Jaye handed over at the retreat. A huge bunch, wow! That whole column of Ribbon blocks is so great looking, could maybe make an interesting border? I like the white diamond created by the two Peaky & Spike blocks next to each other.

And more from Jaye, I like the colors in this grouping a whole lot. In the top row, the Sliver block plus the Ribbon block is a super interesting shape.

Start of 3 I's

 

The challenge this year for the BAMQ group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair is "Work In A Series". The details are to make four quilt blocks, minimum size 4x6", quilt size max 40" square. Here's my first pass quilt design in EQ8 for a 24" wide by 36"long quilt. I like this size, it'll match the other ones I've made in this size. The four "blocks" are quite big, sized at 11x17" unfinished with a small sashing all around. The quilt block I used is called "Ribbon Border".  The quilt will not necessarily be these exact colors. My main idea is each of the four blocks will be very different from each other, they'll only have the same block design. The quilt has a name before I even start sewing: The 3 I's (Ideation Iteration Implementation) 

Starting out with Ideation first, what forms concepts do I want to work with within the parameters. The main thing is each of the four blocks are different one from the other, but they must all four work together as a whole.

The first idea group for the four blocks that I'm starting with is to have the blocks be made as follows:

1. All Prints
2. All Solids
3. All hand-dyes
4. All black/white/grey

My second idea is:

1. Each, or some of the, elements of the block design are pieced prior to using in the block
2. Each element of the block design is machine embroidered in its own design before piecing or as part of quilting process
3. All the pieces of the block are manipulated by tucks and folds and gathers before piecing
4. All pieces are very different textures within a block

These two sets of ideas may combine as I proceed. I think the sashing fabrics will be letter/numbers fabrics. Such an orderly start to a creative project, usually I don't write it all down like this.

I've printed out a foundation piecing pattern.

And here's the first fabric choices for the block that will be all prints.

And 9 More

 I'm pretty pleased with this group of Pantone Project blocks. There were several that I had to choose between a more modern fabric and an older one that both matched pretty well, but as you can see I mostly ended up with more modern choices.

One of the older fabrics, a shiny foil printed looked good as a reverse for the Card Trick block.

I had to lay out the blocks on my Kaffe Fassett flannel design wall on the floor as the actual design wall is completely occupied. Meg wasn't happy because I had to scoot her off of the blocks.

It does look like a pretty fun place to lie down now that she's made me notice that.

From Pirate Black to Candy Pink

All of a sudden I've got 9 Pantone Project blocks to make, so I did the hard part first today...which is choosing the fabrics. Yes there are "only" 8 cards pictured here, the photo was taken before I'd gotten around to getting the mail from the post office box.

 There's another step that I've been doing now that we're so close to the end of the block making step. I've got my blocks that I've made sorted into color groups (Green, Blue, Pink, etc.) and I'm checking to make sure I'm not re-using the same fabrics. Quite a few times I've found that I've chosen the same fabric again as a lot of these cards are really close in tone, tint, and/or shade.

I love friend Jaye's notation on the Pirate Black: Argh!

Final Bohemian Wife Blocks

 

I think I've now finished with piecing the blocks for the Bohemian Wife quilt. Feeling very pleased about having gotten there. Of course there's just a zillion blocks up on the design wall waiting to be assembled into a quilt top, but I'm a lot closer to getting done with this project. I didn't take a picture to post because they're not all arranged in the right spots yet.

Here's the last five blocks all together.

This one is a little matchy-matchy, but that's okay, with all the contrast of pattern I think it's okay. It won't stand out too much.

I've started trying to figure out the how-to's and how-much on cutting out the background strips. There's something like 60 strips of various lengths and widths. This is not very clear in the written pattern *ahem* This is one of the main reasons so many people find this quilt pattern challenging! I found a chart that another quilter has made that will hopefully help. It's a spreadsheet, which is what my mind was already heading towards making.

Bohemian Framing

 

All of the 3.5" Economy Blocks for the Bohemian Wife. I laid them out together so that I could select out which ones were going to be getting the additional border treatment.

My collection of the teeny tiny "leftover" HSt's have quadrupled in quantity.

They really are so fun and I'm contemplating how to use them. Maybe all in one big block in this quilt? As a quilted pillow sham to go with the quilt? That's not something I've tried to make before, probably worth considering.

Here are the bordered Square in a Square blocks. I like how they get set off and framed, very much emphasized. I especially like the looks of the one with the double border.

These is the block I was testing the erasable marking pen on, and now it's set into a border and still looking fine with even more ironing.

I really do like these fabric choices on this one. I think these colors would make a great color palette for a whole quilt, maybe for a child, maybe not depending on the pattern. And I don't mind the cream vs. white in the block as the difference is separated enough by the vivid yellow print

It turns out that the last blocks left are made using squares of fabric that are bordered in a couple different combinations and various sizes. So that means some more cutting, but that's only 6 left to go!