Easy Street Finish

It isn't trimmed or pressed yet, but the quilt top is finished!  Hooray!
  

 I had thought of doing borders to make a concrete visual finish, but right now I'm just happy that it is done. Borders would probably mean buying more fabric, something else I don't want to do for this project. Here are EQ7 renderings of the borders under consideration.  How much difference the color choice makes!  Looking at the borders below, each one seems to darken the overall quilt.  I think I will stick with no borders, and bind with the yellows to keep things bright and sunny looking.

 
 I'm trying to figure out how far the leftovers from this project will go in a backing. Certainly it won't be enough, but it may make a panel or two so I won't need to buy as much.

In any case, the piecing is finished and I can always add borders any time before it gets quilted.  With all the projects already waiting to be quilted, it will give me plenty of time to change my mind several times.

Meanwhile, the sewing machine has had a deep cleaning, it has been oiled and has a new needle. The area around the machine has been straightened .  Once I do a little more picking up, I will wind a bunch of bobbins and change the rotary cutter blade and  will be all ready to begin Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt next week.

Getting there

So I've been working on getting all the blocks finished.  I think I have finished the alternate blocks, but after miscounting some of the components, I won't say that I HAVE finished.

How does that happen?  The 3.5 inch components were counted as they were made, the were pinned together in groups of 10 to make recounting easier.  I put the pieces out as they would appear in the block and counted stacks of 9 (9 alternate blocks) and discovered that there were too few of certain little blocks.   I suspect that the same gremlin that absconds with the random sock has found its way to the sewing room and has been having a block tasting party.

I don't have room to get them all up on the design wall, but if you saw last weeks post, the empty spots are now filled with the alternate block. Bonnie Hunter calls this design "Easy Street", I think this one will be named "The Sunny Side of Easy Street".

Trying to catch up

Bonnie Hunter's yearly mystery quilt quiltalong is coming up, so I am making a sincere effort to finish the top I started two years ago before starting this one.  All the little pieces were cut and assembled, but had never been sewn into blocks. The layout for this quilt is on-point, so it requires corner units and triangles along the edges. So far I have made the four outside corners and the triangles that complete the end of each row and have mostly assembled the 16 "A" blocks.

I thought I had finished all of the "A" blocks and was set to knock out the alternate "B" blocks, because, hey, there are only 9 of those! However  it seems that there is one final seam to do on each "A".  I don't know if I should blame that on a faulty memory or on wishful thinking.

I didn't use Bonnie's colors, but substituted my own- which can be risky on a mystery quilt.  As I assembled the blocks and triangles, I worried that the choices I made were way too bright when  put together. I wanted something bright, but not so bright that it would keep me awake!

This morning I decided to put a few pieces on the design wall  to get an idea of how it all comes together. 

More about Bonnie: Bonnie Hunter is a talented, prolific and generous quilter, pattern designer, author and quilting teacher who has shared her patterns with other quilters.  There are a good number of free patterns on her blog.  For several years now she has designed a mystery quilt as a gift to quilters, and hosts an informal quilt-along. Each Friday a new set of instructions is given, everyone works at their own pace, but can ask questions and share progress via Bonnie's blog. Generally the first 'clue' is posted the day after (American) Thanksgiving and the final clue arrives around New Years. To learn more about this years mystery quilt, click the link then click on the last tab "Grand Illusion Mystery".