En Provence…clue #1

Wonderful day with family on Thanksgiving. It however is the first year we did not have our daughters present during the day. Good food and family talking/memories. Wonderful sermon on all we have and to give thanks. The best to come when we feast at the heavenly banquet.

We spent the night at a hotel near by the gathering and took advantage of being close to where we get the oil changed on the car. Some prep for our travel to Az in about 6 weeks. Was able to see the first clue at the hotel, but did not get to start until early afternoon. This year really going to concentrate on accurate cutting and piecing. I did revisit my stash and found a few more fabrics as we are doing four patches in neutrals. New machine this year, so really trying to find and remain on a consistent 1/4 inch seam. I have some neutrals from last year’s mystery. That quilt will go to my daughter, so nice to have some of that fabric in this quilt. I worked on it for about 3.5 hours. I have taken into sewing standing, but sometimes it does bother my back after awhile. I cut a bunch of strips,then spent time playing and matching fabrics. So far so good. I always like to make a few more blocks than called for. Some of the left over scraps from cutting I am using as a leader/ender blocks that probably will be used for backing or matching pillowcases/schams. 

Love all the excitement of the mystery and the variety of colors gals choose.

En Provence -clue #1
Happy Mystery quilting!

Fabulous fall…

Another great fall week in Wisconsin. We have only a few yellow leaves on our front tree. I’m sure they will be gone by end of week. So wonderful to soak in the fall sunshine outside. Hoping it lasts another week as we have tickets to Badger football game this coming Saturday. Late afternoon into evening. They sure are playing great.

This week we were able to kayak across the lake again,have a burger and a beer. Looks like this coming week we maybe able to do it again. All the piers are out and you can hear gun shots of duck hunting. The lake always has a calming effect on the soul especially with many things on the mind. Most our out of our control.

I have been able to continue keeping up with the 365 Challenge blocks. We now have less than 2 months. I think with this quilt I am going to hand quilt in larger pieces and then join. I have purchased my quilting thread and will need to purchase some wool batting for this one. I may not get to hand quilting it until we return from Arizona this spring.  

I have started my paper piecing Christmas Wreath. Not real crazy about paper piecing, but cute pattern and a great way to use up some Christmas fabric scraps. It will replace my fall leaves wall quilt when complete. I have done 4 of the large blocks and 5 small blocks with 11 more small blocks to complete. This one I plan on machine quilting.

My parents dog daisy is in need of a winter sweater, so I crocheted a larger one from last year. It is pretty bright and I think big enough. We will see her tomorrow for a fitting and a picture. Last time I was at my mom’s I grabbed some yarn. Every so often get the urge to crochet. So with some of the yarn working on some mittens. With the cooler weather I discovered that I cannot find my winter mittens from our move. Actually bought a pair. You know when you do that they then appear. So far no sightings. 

We saw 2 movies this past week. “I am not ashamed” and “Hacksaw Ridge”. Both very good. We especially like theaters with recliners. 

My big purchase of fabric arrived and it looks great. 3 of the fabrics are for Christmas gifts of soup bowl cadies. So cut my 10 inch squares of fabric and wrap n zap batting. I am thinking of making 8 for my sisters in laws, daughters, niece and mom. 

Then there is the Bonnie Hunter Quilt mystery. En Provence. So that material came as well. Like them all. Pulled some of my stash as well. I am thinking I may use only 2 dark purples and 2 light purples and use more for the neutrals, yellows and greens. I guess it may depend on the clues. I don’t know who will get this quilt, it might be mine. I took a few pictures and also black and whites to watch the color tones. I have one yellow that is a bit light so may have to be careful of that fabric. I so enjoy these mysteries and the many color schemes. This one I am going to work on clues during day and finish hand quilting last year’s mystery in evening. 

Some of my light purples looked dark. Also you can see my light yellow. Nice ways to look at fabric values, especially if they end up next to each other.


This seems better. I have even added a few neutrals and two golds from last year’s mystery. That is pretty cool as I liked these gold colors. Not sure my daughter will like them in her red and white quilt, but they are there.

Tomorrow going with my parents to an early turkey dinner at a local church. Will do a little raking of leaves prior to lunch. Hope to be back home to watch our Green Bay Packers. Love football season. Soon we will be doing a little more serious thinking about our drive to Arizonia. We have planned our hotels and made reservations and hope to leave first week in January weather permitting.

Happy Quilting!

En Provence Mystery! The excitement begins

This will be my forth mystery. While each step usually takes about a week to complete, the final result is so amazing. So neat that blocks become larger blocks and such a neat design. I love how pictures from a recent trip are taken and color/blocks are designed around them. We are taking a special trip in February and I might try to do something like that as well. The colors used are also not always the colors I would choose together, but it all seems to work out.

En Provence
So I went thru my stash. I have a fair amount of greens, yellows and some light purples. Interestingly i just completed a purple quilt for one of my daughters. I don’t have a lot of deeper purples so I will purchase that color. I used to have a burgendy/magenta, but must have used it up as I could not locate any of it. So will purchase that color and use only that color as my constant. I have learned that when you buy fabric to always buy some neutral colors. I have some tone-on-tones, solids and some design neutrals, but found 4 additional favorites. While picking these out I added some fabric so I can make soup bowl cozies that will be Christmas gifts. So this will be my last big purchase of the year. Backing I will purchase down in AZ after final mystery is revealed.

I learned last year to really slow down and ENJOY the process, especially using fabrics and attempting to cut and sew accurately. I think the only part of quilting process that I do not enjoy is sewing the blocks together and sewing rows. Anything else I love to do. 

This quit mystery is based on a visit to France, wine country…I love wine, so will have to find some French music to sew by. Last year it was Italian music. I even wrote some of the titles of songs in the neutral fabrics. Maybe this year it will be names of French wines. It is all so fun!

I am still hand quilting the last mystery and hope to have all blocks quilted in  next 4-5 weeks. That will leave the final borders and scallop edge/binding to finish. I still have quit mystery 1 & 2 to quilt. All in good time. I think I have a little tennis elbow strain on my left arm, so was resting it a bit and started to use a special pressure brace to keep it from tensing up too much. It seems to work right now.

I started Celebration Wreath using my many Christmas scraps as I noticed that I need a Christmas wall quilt. I do not do much paper piecing but decided I like this pattern. 

Celebration Wreath
Finished putting batting on my Quilters Madder QAL. Will machine quilt this one.

Family

This weekend we had my sister-in-laws over to see the condo and just visit. We are seeing our families getting bigger and more independent that now it is difficult to get extended families together. Many of our children are in college and working which is their priority at their time in life. Our youngest daughter stopped by but this visit brought us news that we were not real happy with. We always want what is best for our children, we bring them up with values and morales. The world is changing and younger folks don’t offen see things the way we do. I guess it comes with experiences in life. We can try to guide, inform and try to reason with them. Share our thoughts but in the end they are adults and have to make decisions and possibly learn from them. So from a parents perspecitive it has brought much reflection, searching for the right thing to say and do. And most importantly more fervent prayer. One hopes and prays that all will work out. I guess as our children get older we need to pray for them even more than when we had a bit more control of their lives. Especially difficult when you do not see them often as they have their life. Yes technology is wonderful with Facebook, messenger and texting. We can find out so much more than when we were their age.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Quilting!