Mystery Quilt 2009

I've got the top all done! It is a pretty basic pattern because the focus is going to be on the machine quilting that we do tomorrow. Here are the fabric choices I made. Being a mystery we were only told the different values and amount that we needed. I joined the group the day before it started so I just used what fabric I had in my stash. I wouldn't necessarily choose these fabrics to go together normally but for this fun, learning quilt they will work just fine.

I took a number of breaks during the day including one to finish quilting the charity quilt  that was already on the frame so I didn't finish up the top until around 3:30 this afternoon. Only a couple of mistakes, including putting the setting corners onto all the flying geese instead just half of them like the directions said to. My only excuse is my sons gave me all (all) the Beatles CD's for Christmas and I had them cranked up and was probably just having a little too much fun be-bopping along :) 

Anyways , I did get it done and here it is. Lots and lots of open spaces to to some fancy quilting in!

What a year!

It has been so long since I've caught up with my blog I can't believe it. We've been extremely busy moving into our house and doing all the reno's. My sweetheart of a husband started work on my quilting studio the first day taking down a wall to expand the room enough for the quilting frame to be set up. To make a very hectic, busy and exhausting story short we're all moved in, reno's are 90% done, I absolutely love my new quilting studio and house. Yep - in that order - a quilters gotta have her priorities!

I did finish the Irish chain before we started the reno's. It's all ready for quilting but I'm going to be doing a number of charity quilts to get back into the swing of things. I'm on my second on now - wow, it was almost like starting over but I'm kind of back into it already. I'll post some pictures of the Irish Chain before and after quilting as well as my studio.

I've started an on-line mystery quilt today. It's made for stand-up machine quilters. We received the piecing instructions this morning and I've just finished cutting. Today we piece and load the quilt on the frame and tomorrow - New Year's day - we quilt! There's on-line videos that we'll be receiving an lots of instructional stuff. It's put on by LongArm University www.LongarmUniversity.com and so far it's been pretty fun. Never done anything like this before but I figured it would be a good way to get back into free-hand quilting and learn some techniques.

So - I'll end the year quilting and start off the new year quilting - what more could one ask for!