Mystery Quilt and String Challenge

I’m hooking up with Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt link up today.  Welcome if you’re new here and the link up brought you.  We are a busy blog with update twice a day, unless life gets in the way.  There’s always something going on here!!

So what do you think of the mystery quilt?  I’m liking it so far.  Last week I left you here with a stack of finished blocks.  When Monday’s reveal came I was wowed but a little nervous.  I am TERRIBLE and known for turning pieces the wrong direction!!  I was sure that sashing would do me in.View Post

I’m also a girl that needs to study a pattern for a bit before I feel comfortable jumping in a sewing….so not much happened in terms of me sewing on Monday. I also started in a on debate.  Do I do that scrappy setting triangle border?  I decided not to but that left me working to figure out the sizes I’d need to cut in order to make the setting triangles…and measuring to see if I had enough of one fabric.  I did. I wanted to calm the quilt down a bit and cutting all of my cornerstones from one fabric and opting to use one fabric for the setting triangles is doing that for me.  Happily, to this point, I hadn’t twisted even one sashing pieces!!  It shows only one piece but I actually have two pieces with this much done as of Tuesday night at bedtime.

You can see my birthday quilt hiding out behind the mystery quilt…. That’s where I was on Tuesday night at bed time and by Wednesday night at bedtime, I was here!
It was together but not ironed. Thursday at nap time I gave it a good ironing.

While the kiddos were still sleeping and Karl was home to keep watch, I slipped outside long enough to grab this photo.  What do you think of it? I like it.  The design was nice…unique.  I was surprised by the sashing.  On point isn’t my favorite quilt to sew but I do like the looks of them and this went together surprisingly well for me.  No ripping out which I thought was AMAZING! I am not ending mine here.  I will be gifting this and I’d prefer it a little bigger.  I will need to take it to the quilt shop to see what I can come up with. I did change the directions a little bit.  I didn’t have a lot of tealish color left.  I had picked up a teal batik off the clearance (clean the bolt) type sale thinking it could be the binding.  Well there was enough on it to make all of the setting triangles out of that fabric and that’s what I did.  That means I didn’t need to piece the teal part of the setting triangles. Here’s a close up of what looks like.
I love scrappy but in most every scrappy quilt I need some type of constant.  For me, it was these setting triangles.  The fabric was a perfect for it! A trip to the quilt shop is what I need next.  If anyone has seen any ideas on making it bigger besides regular borders, please pass the ideas along to me.

Onto my String Challenge: For those of you who have been following along with me, you know that I’ve challenged myself to finish all of the quilts in Bonnie Hunter’s new book String Fling before her new string book comes out….I only have four that aren’t finished and all of them are started….so….here’s this week’s progress. …not much.  I finished the outer white part of these Pineapple Crazy blocks and have them trimmed up.

I only worked on my Pineapple Crazy blocks as a leader and ender project again.  Working only in leader and ender style doesn’t get me very far very fast but I do have a good excuse for not a lot of progress (that mystery quilt).  So here are my blocks.

I counted them up and made my usual note.  Need 60 it says at the top as I need 60 of these little blocks.  Have 12…so that means 12 finished.  I was kind of sad there were only 12 but then I realized that 12 is a pretty good number.  That means I’m 20% done with the border blocks…I’ll take that progress.

I save my little dishwasher powder packs buckets.  They are perfect for holding these little blocks.  All of the finished ones get popped into the bucket.

I didn’t de-paper these yet.  I’ll keep them in the bucket and grab them along with a plastic bag the nest time we are on a road trip.  That way I can de-paper them in the car.  I really like de-papering in the car.  I do keep a lint roller in the cubby though.  Depending on what I wear, I sometimes need a lint roller.

I have more blocks in progress.  I’m keeping them buy the sewing machine and will continue to work on them leader and ender style.  Little by little they will get done!

I’ll be back here next week with some string challenge progress.  I’m not sure what I’ll be working on yet.  Hopefully I’ll have progress now that the brunt of the mystery quilt is finished.