Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Foundation piecing Wild Geese & A Very Old UFO

This year I participated in Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt along - Grand Illusion & decided to only work with fabric I already had in my stash, thus a different colour palette was used to Bonnie's

My fabric selection

Clue 1 underway using the trusty old treadle

I liked the main block created by all the units but the green sashing units just weren't doing it for me (too dark) so decided to go for plain cheddar sashing with friendship star cornerstones.

The nearly finished top - looking at this picture it needs another narrow border of the black to contain the stars on the edge. My "Inspired by Grand Illusion" is quite different from the Bonnie original which using the suggested colours looks fabulous, just google Grand Illusion mystery quilt & check out all the lovely photos.

Not wanting to waste 120 orphaned sashing units, I decided to convert them into 9 patches

Surround them with cheddar, geese & square in a square cornerstones. I hand drafted a foundation pattern for the geese to fit & used Bonnie's free pattern here for the cornerstones

Playing with a layout

1st 10 blocks together. 

Having finally got the hang of foundation paper piecing I was hooked & just couldn't resist having a go at some Wild & Goosey blocks everyone was playing with over on Quiltville's Open Studio

This pattern was originally published in Quiltmaker May/June ’13 issue under Bonnie Hunter's addicted to scraps column. The original pattern is for 3.5" units unfinished, I enlarged mine to 4.5" The PDF pattern can be downloaded from Quiltmaker here

This is a great pattern for using up tiny scraps but I decided to go controlled scrappy with this one & am still using fabric from the stash, mainly left overs from other projects

 

Now on a foundation paper piecing roll, I came across this fabulous site by Susan Gatewood who generously shares her foundation patterns for the Dear Jane quilt, so I dug out my very old UFO & decided to re-tackle this one. 

Row 1 so far

Current favourite block 

So, unintentionally, I have already started 2 new projects this year & revisited a UFO. I'm hoping to concentrate on existing WIP (works in progress) & in order to take stock I've created another page which also helps remind me I need to finish some of the older projects before starting more new ones.

Having said that, I find I am more productive by having so much variety to work with as I never get bored & they will all get finished in the end!

How many WIP's do you currently have and are there ones that will remain UFO's? What do you do with them if you really don't like them anymore? Would love to hear your views on this:)

New Year - New project

Happy New Year to you all, hope you had a lovely holiday break. We had a pleasant stay in France visiting Mum where I managed to get another fair bit of hand stitching done to add a good section to the thimble top (the weather was so damp, so we didn't venture out much).

As I had a few days holiday left on our return before going back to work, I was determined to get a good start on Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt  Easy Street .......so glad I decided to have a go at this, my first ever mystery quilt, as I learnt so much along the journey :)

Not having a ton of suitable scraps I used yardage I had available for the grey, black & white & turquoise and Kaffe Fassett scraps for the green & purple & just hoped they would look ok.

Step 1 - Remember to check the thread is suitable for the project before sewing!

 4 patches - 192 done, lesson learnt here - spinning seams

First ever attempt at flying geese units......a bit tricky to start with but after 128 of them got the hang of it and learnt to use the easy angle ruler in the process.

64 sitting turkeys !

More flying geese......getting pretty good at these now!

All the units now done

Step 7 done but tricky trying to press those triangle blocks!

Step 8 - 1st block ready to sew

Attempt at layout but design wall a tad too small......loving the design!

So resorted to the floor with some interference - notice the bump?

Guess who?

All this sewing can be so tiring

Finally got it all stitched together and felt quite proud of myself and it wasn't until I checked the photos that I noticed this.........urghhhhhhh! How did that happen? I blame the cat!

Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Thank you Bonnie for designing & sharing this wonderful pattern and providing such great easy steps to follow, I would have never attempted such a project with so many pieces on my own!

Do go check out all the other great tops created by other participants at the link up here and in the Flickr group here