Mystery Link-up

Bonnie Hunter's 2016 Mystery has begun!  The first clue was posted on Friday.  You can find it here.  We are using neutrals this week.  To see everyone's progress so far, check out the Monday Link-up.
In the past, I have used shirtings (Celtic Solstice), black on white (Orca Bay and Easy Street), mostly whites and creams (Grand Illusion) and a conglomeration (Allietare) last year.

Allietare, just back from the quilter, Betty Lewis, Louisville, MS

I'm in the process of hand stitching the binding.

For En Provence, I'm using these...

 And so far I've completed 93 Four-patches...

Last week two of my granddaughters spent a few days with me to work on their quilts.  Megan, 15 (soon to be 16) started a new top.  She used an Eleanor Burns pattern from her book Quilts Thru the Seasons.

Country Lanes

Megan finished the top and it's sandwiched, ready to quilt when she's on Christmas break in about 3 weeks.  Emily, 14, sewed her top last summer.  We sandwiched her top last week and she quilted it on my Juki.

Rail Fence

  She has the binding sewn on and took it home with her to hand stitch.  Both girls are planning to enter their quilts in Mountain Quiltfest in Pigeon Forge in March.  Good Luck!

I recently finished The Mystery Row Quilt published in American Patchwork and Quilting this year starting in January.  It was designed by Pat Sloan.  I used all Batiks and it was quilted by Betty Barrentine, Ackerman, MS.

I've got more to share.  Stay tuned until next time!

How Time Flies!!

WOW!  I can't believe it's been nearly two years since I've blogged.  Since the last post, Grand Illusion has been completely finished and even entered into Mountain Quiltfest in 2015.  I have now completed Bonnie Hunter's 2015 mystery, Allietare!  I'm getting it from the quilter this week, will add the binding and photographed for the next post.

I have made a baby quilt for a friend who has a new grandson.  I machine quilted it myself and wanted to share the technique I used to mark the quilting lines.  I'm sure this is not new but it was new-to-me and just in case it might help someone else, I'm going to share.  (The pattern I used is Gimme 5 and Supersize by Tricia Cribbs, the Turning 20 Author.)

First, I only do straight line with walking foot quilting.  I've tried free motion and hopefully one day I will be able to master that, but for now it just isn't going to happen.  Here is a photo of the finished quilt.

I straight line quilted "in the ditch" on all the seams, going vertical and horizontal.  That left some of the spaces between seams too large to leave unquilted.  I drew what I wanted to quilt on freezer paper and cut out the shapes I needed to stitch around.  I have photos of what I used on the 8" square piece.  I hope you can see in the photo above the other two places I also had to use my "stencils".

I know I could have drawn a line diagonally but I didn't want to mark on the quilt this time.  I was looking for another way.

The other diagonal

Next, I wanted to stitch a square in the square design.

(I could have ironed the freezer paper to the quilt top, but didn't want to move the quilt back and forth between the ironing board and sewing machine.  Therefore I pinned.)

Finished Quilting Motif for this block.

I plan to only use this technique when quilting baby quilts or smaller.  I can't imagine wrestling with a larger quilt.  That is just not for me.

Until next time.....