QuiltLady

Have a tour of Quiltville, Bonnie Hunter's site.

I must say, the blue strings aren't singing to me, but man o man, do I love the read strings.

Almost caught up. Good thing I'm only doing half. Now that Bonnie has her new cutting tool, next year's mystery will involve 2,348,200 four patches. Just joking!

Here's a link to Bonnie's Quiltville Site. You should play around there, if you haven't already. Lots of fun things to do and see.

Not finished yet, but I really like it.

Bonnie Hunter sure is getting me to stretch. After promising that I wouldn't do the string blocks, I decided, oh what the heck and started making the red group. I was afraid I would have enough scraps and, ahem, actually have enough red scraps to make twice as many as needed, especially since I'm only doing half the quilt. I love how they look so disorganized and almost ugly before being trimmed. Once they're trimmed, they're quite lovely. As you can see, I have a liking for pinks and orangey reds.

Since I'm doing the red string blocks, I guess have to backtrack and do the blues, as well. There are my scraps and paper all prepared.

This is a lot of fun. I participated in the RRCB mystery last year and made a few fatal mistakes. First and foremost, since the outcome was to be a mystery, I was afraid I wouldn't like it and didn't want to waste my favorite fabrics. So I only used fabrics I didn't like. You can guess the result of that. Second, I don't like big quilts, but decided to do the entire thing instead of cutting it down to a size I felt more comfortable with. You can guess the result of that.

For the Orca Mystery Quilt, I am using my favorite fabrics, but only making half the number of suggested blocks. In addition, while I don't hate string blocks, I don't particularly like them either so I will use either one fabric or many blues to keep some of the motion.

The fun part is learning new techniques. I've tried all different ways to make HSTs and was not satisfied with any. Always, I had to cut them down. Someone on Bonnie's facebook page linked to this site that has free downloadable piecing paper with the lines already drawn. Huzzah. That is what you see is in the picture above. One sheet produces 18 perfect HSTs. Taking Bonnie's advice, I used a small stitch and a large needle. Removing the paper is a piece of cake. Then just press and snip off those doggies. Love it and will make good use of it in the future.

Thanks again Bonnie.