And The Countdown is On…

It is really hard to believe that there is so little time left in the year 2017.

I mean, it just seems like yesterday that I put up a new calendar and cleaned up after Christmas.  This past week I deep cleaned the house for Thanksgiving and put up my decorations for that holiday.

In a couple of weeks, all of that will go back into boxes and the tree will come out along with the twinkling lights and greenery.

And suddenly 2018 will dawn.  A New Year with new possibilities.

All of which means one thing for me:  I gotta finish our Quilt Club’s Mystery Quilt.  It’s supposed to be shown at the January guild meeting. That quilt and Sue Garmin’s Halo have been front and center on my machine for about  a month now.  I will show pictures of Halo’s progress soon, but wanted to share what I’ve designed for the Mystery Quilt with this blog.

As I’ve said before, we were given six blocks with the option of making either 12-inch or 6-inch blocks (finished).  I didn’t want to make the large blocks, and was more than happy to make the 6-inch ones since I love making small blocks.   The problem with that is six 6-inch squares makes for a very small quilt, even with setting triangles and setting blocks.  After working with a layout,  I made ten additional 6-inch blocks to form a border with the quilt squares and decided to use a medallion in the middle.

I had hoped to come up with an original design for the middle, but I ran out of time before I ran out of imagination. So, I chose one Esther Aliu’s flower designs on her newest pattern, On My Window Flowers Bloom.  I love her designs and never seem to have enough time to work with them.

I wanted to make it look as 3-dimensional as possible, so I decided to do all sixteen leaves with two colors of green, as well as make the poppies (I think they’re poppies) in two colors of coral.  I introduced a floral black in the cornerstones and will echo that again in the final borders, so I used it again for the vase and a green that is not in the leaves but used in the blocks.  My goal was to use only the fabrics in Connecting Thread’s Firenze collection, and I am happy that I’ve been able to do so.

But let me tell you, getting all of those leaves and stems down was no easy task.  The flowers were much easier.  I think I ended up pretty close to the original pattern, so I ironed everything down and laid out what I had done up to this point.

 

I am fairly pleased.

And Sam seems to like it.

And yes, he will make an appearance in the quilt….just wait….

This is raw-edge applique, so the next decision that needed to be made was thread.  Fortunately, my mom gave me this thread kit (also from Connecting Threads) for my birthday and the greens and corals match perfectly.

I pulled a black from my Mettler connection.  As soon as I get through making the pinwheel set for Halo, this will be under my needle this weekend.

The High Point Quilt Guild had an awesome meeting last night with the quilter that designed the Harry Potter quilt, Susan Owenby.  She is a powerful quilter with a powerful message.  More on her later.

Until next week, take care and quilt fearlessly!

 

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Sam