Bonnie Hunter Mystery Madness

Yes, madness!

I mean that in a good way, though.

When I joined a local quilt guild in late February, the ladies who had participated in the 2012 Bonnie Hunter mystery were still complaining and from what I gleaned from discussions, the quilts weren’t finished. I’m sure I heard at least one declare that they would not be doing another one.

It takes awhile to learn all the lingo and get familiar with big names and brands, designers and greats. I have a long way to go still, but at the time, I remember feeling that I should know about the Bonnie Hunter mysteries. I heard the name enough in my first few weeks in the guild to know I wouldn’t forget it! Of course, I googled it right away, found Quiltville, took a look at past mysteries and said to myself (and to my hubby and kids while showing the quilt pics from the site), “This is madness! No wonder all the ladies at the guild were frustrated. What are these things made of? A million pieces?”

And then I followed it up with: “They are really pretty, though.”

It was about the end if September when one of the ladies in the guild asked if I’d be joining them for the Bonnie Hunter mystery this year. She said I should. She said, “It”ll be fun!”

Fun to watch me loose my mind? Didn’t they realize they’d already scared me away from it?

After I was asked a second time a couple of weeks later, I was tempted to go to Quiltville and check out the album of mysteries past….again.

I quizzed my family to get their two cents. I’d already decided this was a challenge I had to take up. I put the date of the first clue release on my calendar, and made a special trip to Lowe’s to get my paint swatches. I pulled fabrics from my itty bitty stash, and kept the paint cards in my purse. I added a fat quarter here and a fat quarter there. I still don’t have every inch of fabric I’ll need, but I’ll pick it up along the way. I picked up a bit more oranges today, actually.

I have 77 of the 92 orange background tri recs for clue #1 done, and none if the neutral background.

I got a late start! I forgot to have my calendar buzz me a reminder. That’s the thing about such cool technology – you have to tell it what to do! So I didn’t get started till Wednesday ….and another clue comes out tomorrow! What to do? I can’t feed my family freezer fodder again tomorrow because I’ve engaged in the madness for another day! Can I?

Join the madness…
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2013/12/celtic-solstice-mystery-monday-link-up-1.html

Craziness

So many times in the last few weeks I’ve wanted to post, but craziness steps in.  Craziness?  you ask.  Yes.  It seems that everything comes at once, sometimes.  My website was launched, and I’ve been busy promoting it with business cards, displaying my quilts at a craft bazaar, and using Facebook to get the word out.  Of course, I’ve also got myself busy with too many projects at once, and I can hear Lucy van Pelt saying, “It’s your own fault, Tracey Lynn!”  Haha.  It is.  But I just can’t help it!!!! Let me explain.  When Pieces by Polly offers a quilt-along, I just HAVE to do it.  Her patterns are quick, simple and so original.  I think the next step will be to sew the rows… And then when I was asked to participate in Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt with the ladies at the guild, I just had to say yes, because I’ve never done a mystery quilt before, and it’ll be more fun to do it with others, right?  Here’s my stash for that…

And if I’m going to sell t-shirt quilts, it’d be wise of me to always have one in the works – if I don’t have an order to work on, I should work on one for our family to have more examples to show (I literally have 5 stacks of tees for different quilts), or I should work on one to sell outright (I’ve collected Kentucky Wildcat tees from thrift stores to make a fan quilt to sell).

I’m behind on the Craftsy 2013 BOM,

and I bought fabric to make a table runner for a friend, which I haven’t started yet. I haven’t finished the pattern I was making for an EPP bag – my little town has two stores that sells zippers, and both were out of stock of the color zipper I needed.  So the project got set aside and I’ve yet to finished it…except for buying those zippers when they came in 😉

I need about a week of full days to quilt to get current, but that’s where it gets crazy…. It IS the holiday season, so there has been cooking and decorating and extra family time…(no shopping yet).  To make it all crazier, there’s a ton of underlying stress in our house….

Though I have not had a job outside this home in more than 20 years (other than volunteer work), I now have to get a job.  We sacrificed financially while I homeschooled our children and I have stayed home since I stopped doing that three years ago (well I did go to school long enough to get an AS), but now, I can’t stay home any longer.  We are sinking.

My son’s friend was diagnosed with Leukemia in September and has undergone a transplant and been in a coma since.  I cannot get her off my mind.  I am thinking about her and praying for her, my son, and her family constantly. I haven’t even met her, but my son has spoken of her almost daily for over a year…I feel like I know her, and my heart is just breaking for him. Reading her brother’s blog just makes me cry. Every time there’s a new post I think maybe it’s the one saying she’s awake.

And I cry entirely too much.  That makes it hard to do anything.  Not sure what’s going on there, but maybe some PTSD from my mom’s stroke this past spring.  Maybe winter is affecting me – but I AM taking my D3 and using my daylight bulbs.  I don’t know.  I am super-stressed about having to get a job, too. Maybe it’ll help today to just have gotten some of that in type.  Now I’m going to turn on K-Love and quilt.  Therapy.

My Quilt Website Is Up!

It’s been in the works for a while, but I finally published my website!  I’ve made some t-shirt quilts for my family, and have  had such a positive response that I decided to make them for others, and have a job I love in the process 🙂

Go check it out!  And there’s still time to have one made for Christmas!  And it’s never to early to think about graduation gifts for May, so let me help you give a truly meaningful gift!

www.quiltedtees.com

Now I’m off to work on a new quilt from Pieces by Polly.  Her Nativity in the Trees quilt along has just begun, so join us for the fun!  

 

November Swaps

QBSA for Maria:

 

And BSA for Teresa:

 

October BSA for Sandi

I got to choose the block, as only colors were specified! I hope it serves its purpose well!

October QBSA for Carin

This one goes all the way to Sweden!  How exciting!  I hope it’s a good fit!

Update:

Here’s the lovely block I received from Carin:

 

 

Quilting Heaven

Wow! I didn’t realize that I haven’t posted since my last QBSA squishy was mailed! I have been busy, busy in quilt heaven 🙂 In other words, I’ve been very productive, and enjoyed my work!

I have finished three quilt tops, almost got my t-shirt quilt website ready to publish, have made two blocks to swap, and finally got the rest of the supplies I need to make a sample for pics to write my first pattern, which will be for a bag that I designed as my EPP bag, shown at the bottom of this post!  I’ll also be selling the bag I use to write the pattern, so keep an eye open for that.  If you don’t do EPP, it would also make a great cosmetic bag!

So here’s a look at the quilt tops finished this month:

From Amy Gibson’s Secret Garden workshop on Craftsy

This is my daughter’s Girl Scout t-shirt quilt, which she is anxious for me to finish. I’ll quilt it this month, hopefully, and provide some colorful pictures for my website 😉

I love how couching her name in the center square turned out!
I’m also donating a t-shirt quilt to a high school senior trip fund for a cousin, which will help the senior class raise money for the trip with a raffle for the quilt, which is made of the school’s shirts.  That should be a successful fundraiser for them and provide some advertising for me!   And, of course, it will also provide some more colorful pictures for my website!  This is just a sneak preview:

Today, I set all this aside to make the blocks for my swap partners, which I will post about separately to make it easy for them to find.

I’ve got just a bit of time to work on a creative backing for that school quilt before it’s time to cook dinner!

QBSA

The block from my swap partner arrived today, and I love it! It’s so fun to do this, and to be surprised, since I requested any star block in colors from Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting.
Also tucked into the package was a pretty piece of fabric and a postcard 😁
Thank you, Sue!

Here’s the block I sent to Sue:

Busy Busy

I’ve been so busy I haven’t blogged about lots o’ stuff!

My grandma’s 80th birthday celebration was a blast!  I got to see all the Aunts and Uncles on my mama’s side, Grandma and Grandpa, and some cousins that I rarely get to see – along with their adorable kids, which is special, since mine are about grown!  My daughter got to travel to the party with me, but hubby and son both had to work, so it was a girls’ trip with my Aunt.  We snapped this photo of four generations:  my daughter, myself, mom, and grandma.  Absolutely priceless.

In other news…

I managed to finish two charity quilts in my mess of a studio by clearing a path to the machine and putting blinders on so I could enjoy a bit of quilting!

And my quilt studio almost has a cleared floor now, as all but a few things have yet to find a place. I don’t have near enough storage, so until I can get some more furniture or plastic organizers, a bit of stack and pile will have to do.

I’ve had such a response to my EPP bag, that I’m working on a pattern to sell, and of course, that means I am making another, so that I can put lots of pics in the pattern. I’ll sell the bag, too, I hope! That possibility is exciting!

And it’s time to start on two t-shirt quilts, which will provide one for my daughter, one to raise money for my niece’s senior trip, as it will be raffled off, and the pics of these quilts will allow me to get my website for t-shirt quilts published – finally!

Lots in the works! Busy, busy…and loving it!

Quilt Studio

When we bought our house ten years ago, we needed a room to dedicate to homeschooling. Not that homeschooling didn’t occur all over the house, yard, and everywhere we went, but we wanted a space for all those books (we used a literature approach), a computer, somewhere that ongoing projects could be accessed easily, and a quiet, comfy place to read. We choose to turn the bedroom at the top of the stairs into a loft by simply not having a doorframe and having only half a wall that overlooked the stairwell

It was perfect.

When I reached the end of my homeschool days, the room was still a quiet place to read, a guest room ( the comfy couch and/or an air mattress), and a sewing space, since I moved in a folding table for my sewing machine to live on.

And then it occurred to me that I could turn this room into a quilt studio!

So I’ve moved the wall of bookshelves downstairs, packed away the books for young children, gave away a ton of stuff, and painted.