Allietare Golds

Well, it's Thursday, not Monday, but Week 3 of Bonnie Hunter's 2015-16 Mystery Quilt, Allietare, is now wrapped up! I had hoped to spend last Sunday finishing the remaining four patches, but I developed some tendonitis in my shoulder. I've found the best cure is to do nothing at all, which is challenging, but it worked and I am better now.

It seems like I get this every year at this time. I used to think it was from hand sewing, but I've realized that it's the computer that's the problem, and sewing is just the collateral. Then I wondered, why do I spend more time on the computer at this time of year? I realized the answer is too much online shopping! So there's a lesson in there somewhere. :D

I was happy to be working with all the Kaffe golds, ochres and umbers this week. They were my main inspiration for this project, so it was nice to finally use them. A lot of Kaffe's older designs used this palette, so I've been using up some long time stash inhabitants...

...like this gold Lotus Leaf. I love that combination of gold with chalky pink! I bought most of these in long quarters (9" x 42"), and they were a tangled nightmare to wash. They all frayed down to about 8.5". I'll never buy a long quarter again!

For this week's clue, where all the cuts are multiples of 2", it made the most sense to cut across in short 2" x 8.5" strips. And with a tricky large print like this, I thought it would be easiest to manage if I made the four patches from the same two fabrics, rather than random fabrics like Bonnie suggests.

So they just naturally came out in matching sets of four. Maybe I can do something interesting with that down the road, maybe not!

I had hoped that we would be sewing the golds together with our constant fabric, which is my blue batik. The blue would have helped my browner fabrics seem more gold:

We're only halfway, so I guess there's still time for that!

I think I missed the boat on that aqua and taupe four patch on the left there. But otherwise, the big prints work as long as there is enough contrast between the fabrics.

Last time I forgot to show you my black squares...

...which I decided to cut all from the same fabric. I didn't have a lot of suitable black in my stash, so most of it will be from this red hearts fabric. It just seemed easier to cut them all the same.

This week we had to cut 36 large light rectangles, and I decided to cut them all from the same fabric too:

They feel like they will be sashings or borders, so I think that will look good.

And finally, last week I finished the first step on all my hourglass leaders and enders. Now I've started on step two:

I'm amazed at how fast this moves along! I had 300 or so sets left when I started in late October. At this rate they could be done by the end of January, with no extra effort at all. In fact, I miss them right away if I sit down to sew and I forgot to take them out. Now I'm thinking of a new project for when these are done.

The Week 4 Allietare clue comes out tomorrow, and I think a reasonable goal will be to finish it by Thursday, not Monday! My Week 2 post was too late for the link up, so if you missed it you can find it here. And of course, you can see everyone else's Week 3 results right here. We're half way, and I seem to be sorting out the challenges and keeping up, so, woo hoo! Bring it on. :D

Letters, Leaders & Enders

Here's a shot of our maples in the late day sun last week. It was windy, which is why it's a little blurry. This week it's been either sunny and windy, or dark and rainy, so this is the best I've been able to do. This year their colour has been the best ever, which I think is partly due to the dry summer. But mainly I think it's because they are getting a lot more light since we cut down the ash trees that were damaged in the 2013 ice storm.

The moon was up early too:

Yesterday it was really dark all day, so I was happy to be inside and working on my next batch of improv letters:

I was going to put them together today, but here I am blogging instead, so it may not happen!

I also decided this week to see if I can add a leaders & enders project into the mix. Bonnie Hunter has a good description of the process here. I've avoided an L&E project up until now, because I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of my main piece by being distracted by a second project. But with all the short seams in this project (and also in My Country House), I've been using up a lot of thread anchors, so I thought I would try it.

For about an hour I wondered which new project I could start that would be appropriate, until I remembered my hourglass quilt! I ran out of steam on this project in early 2014, because it is super boring. But, boring is perfect for an L&E project, because I don't want to have to think about it at all.

I still need at least 300 more hourglasses, and all the fabrics are already cut and marked. I set up the rest of my lights and darks, right sides together, and piled them up:

I don't know how many are in there, but it is 4.5" tall!

So, can I improv and sew leaders and enders at the same time? Yes! In fact, with all the small fiddly seams on these letters, it was a relief to put in an hourglass set and just rip down the middle of that. Somehow it feels more balanced. At the end of the day I had the first two seams done...

...on 23 hourglass sets (which will be 46 hourglass blocks). It feels really good to get that project moving again. Hopefully this will be a painless way to eat up a lot of the preliminary work on this project.

I admit I've been having one of those "what was I thinking?" moments, about my decision to make this a queen-size quilt. Sure, the hourglasses are easy to make, but I really didn't think much about how long it would take to sew them all together as well. Now I'm starting to think about that too! Hopefully I can do at least some of that in L&E fashion as well. I'll keep you posted!