Sewing without knowing

For the last couple of weeks I've been madly cutting, sewing and pressing to complete the units for Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion mystery quilt before the final reveal. Almost made it.

Not sure why I decided to do this. I have enough ideas and UFOs to fill all my days and nights should I live a few lifetimes. Maybe it's the sewing without knowing what the end result will be that has a certain appeal. Sort of mindless. Well, as mindless as keeping the pieces in the right order can be. Or it could just be procrastination; I have two backings to make that I've been putting off for awhile.

I'm constructing my blocks with the sashing on two sides. Then I'll sew the blocks together in smaller sections so I have only one really long seam to contend with across the quilt at the end. Forget where I learned that trick, but I love not having to sew as many long seams as you would when sewing rows together. 

Next up

The design wall was empty for about five minutes after I finished the Aboriginal top. I had these pieces from Bonnie Hunter's Roll Roll, Cotton Boll! (RRCB) quilt piled up in the sewing room. After I got far enough along in the mystery to realize I was making almost the same block as the Aboriginal top, I stopped working on it. Don't need to add to the UFO tower though so I arranged the pieces I had into something, and this is it.

This plan will use up most of the block pieces. I have to make four more string blocks, which is doable, and trim them down. And I have to figure out whether the remaining pieces -- green squares (on the left) and pink/green/pink units (on the right) -- will work into a border. I liked Bonnie's border, but it doesn't seem to match the scale of this arrangement. Have to think about the border. Suggestions welcome. I have lots of scraps and could be persuaded to piece new units for the border.

Close up of the blocks to be.

Wish I had more than a fat quarter of the pink bird paint by number fabric you see in the detail photo (if you squint). That would have made the perfect border.

How to procrastinate with fabric

Because I should be doing other things, I started a new project. I'd seen this quilt before, thought it was cute, and wasn't tempted. Then I saw it on Kathleen Tracy's blog A Sentimental Quilter, and probably also subconsciously needed to procrastinate doing something, so I immediately got to work on it. Today, it is a partially assembled top. Tonight, it could be a completely assembled top. (Although I saw these oven mitts on the Bloomin' Workshop blog, and I'm wondering if I can get my hands on the right batting today.)

Once I decided to make this, I went to the new shelves and pulled out these fabrics. I remember seeing the print at a quilt show, loving it, buying it, buying four fat quarters to go with it, and then putting the lovely grouping together in the cupboard until the right pattern came along.  

I needed more variety for this project so I pulled more fabrics, and in the end only the red of the original four fat quarters made the cut. The above picture represents hours of fabric pulling and decision making!

I wasn't sure about the cutting part so I traced the template on my top before using a ruler to cut it out. I wanted to make sure the squares were squares and that I didn't wack off bits of my template trying to rotary cut around it. I should have starched this top before cutting, but I forgot. Kathleen's directions were helpful, but there's also a bit of winging it. No idea where to find a proper pattern.

Oh, and I also started Bonnie K. Hunter's "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll" mystery quilt, and I have 600 half-square triangles to make. Yes, 600! Plus most of Step 3. ... I bet JoAnn's has Insul-Bright.