Friday Finish: Easy Street #2

Finally..it’s all the way finished and it was all but easy!!

Two years ago Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt was called Easy Street.  I started out sewing this one….I was doing similar to Bonnie’s coloring but didn’t have purple so substituted pinks…and did it in Civil War reproductions.  You can read about the finished one here in pinks and blues here.

The first few clues were so easy.  I could often finish the clues in a day without even trying very hard….Then I got thinking.  If this quilt was called Easy Street-it much be easy…right??  Why not make TWO!  How about I make a quilt in colors I typically don’t use.  I have tons of browns and greens.   I had lots of darker background fabrics that could go in it too…. Let’s go for it.  Let’s make two of these.  Over two days I quickly caught up with the second quilt.

Things were happily going along just fine when WHAM.  The clues were out.  The mystery was over and there was A LOT of sewing left to do….and I now had to do it for TWO quilts.  I had a miserable time twisting blocks and resewing.  Not good…not good at all.   I put the pink one together first.  I did it according to the instructions.

Then for some odd reason I got a wild hair and decided I liked the quilt better with no borders.  So the second one need more blocks to make it big enough….and boy did it get big.  106″ x 106″!!  Great?!  Now the quilt was together but too big to fit on my quilting machine.

It sat and sat in my closet with me wondering what to do with it.  I liked the quilt.  I wanted the quilt but I didn’t want to pay to quilt it….then I remembered that Lucy at O2B Quilting said if I bought my APQS from her if I ever needed to quilt something larger I could come and rent her 14′ machine and she’d cut me a deal on using it.  PERFECT!

So last week I went there and quilted it.

I didn’t have enough green of one color so it has a scrappy binding.  But that’s okay…it looks great with a scrappy binding.  I really like the quilt now that it’s all finished.  The ripping, tearing out and scrambling to stay along with the mystery quilters was all worth it.

Once at the new house I want to change out quilts on the beds to match the seasons…at least a little bit.  I am anxious for this one to be the fall quilt on my bed.  With a quilt this big Hubby can’t claim I steal the covers all the time.

After Kelli saw my Easy Streets both finished she said you know…I think I have one in the trunk that needs borders yet.  REALLY Kelli???  Yep-She does.  It looks like there will be one more Easy Street in my future being I am the part of the duo who does the machine quilting and binding….and the borders.

It’s a good thing I like the quilt!  If you’re looking for the pattern it’s in Bonnie Hunter’s book More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.  You can buy it here on Bonnie’s site.

To see other quilt progress and finishes check out  Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Link a Finish Friday, Freedom Fridays and Crazy Mom Quilts.