Sit n Sew

Sit n Sew days are FUN!  It's great to get together with friends and our mutual hobby and chat about everything and anything! It's great to be able to host these days again!

While we weren't too many this past week, it was still great to have the entire day to sew. 

I did a trunk show last week and had to whip a couple of quilts off the wall - sure looks bare without them there. 

Quilts are gone!

 I still haven't got the suitcase entirely unpacked and that won't happen for a couple of days.

Want to see where I whisked all the stuff that was in the main part of the studio? Yep - it's under the longarm. Actually, this isn't a bad place for it. It's not in the way when I quilt and it's out of the way in the studio. I've already been digging through the bags and boxes for various things that I'm working on and hopefully, we'll see this pile go down quickly. HA - what an optimist I am!

Projects stored under the longarm

 The sewing day was a good news/bad news kind of day. First the good news. I finished that block with the paper piecing of Quilter's Patch that I posted yesterday. Hmm - what to work on next? I dug out the Bonnie Hunter mystery that is on my list of UFOs for 2018. I might as well continue what I was working on the last Sit n Sew day. I'm merrily sewing the blocks together and if you look closely, you'll see that the orientation of those four patches is very specific. Last time I think I had rotated one four-patch in each of two blocks. Thankfully, it was a corner block.

As I'm sewing the other day, I was doing great. Until I realized that I was continuing to rotate that one block in the corner. Seriously?  I think I had to fix about 12 of 25. But that's not the bad news.

24 blocks of Bonnie Hunter mystery - DONE!

 This is Celtic Solstice which was issued in 2013. In the box below, you can see all the components and the instructions to complete the rest of the quilt.

The rest of the Celtic Solstice quilt

Thankfully, the components are done. I don't think I could face making all those fiddly bits.  I decided to check what was in the other two boxes that were hanging out on the UFO shelf. I knew one of them had extra fabric in the event I had miscounted and I think there are some skinny borders on the quilt so the fabric is already set aside.

Two more boxes for the mystery quilt

I opened the purple box and sure enough, there is all the extra fabric to complete this quilt.

Extra fabric

 So if all the components are in one box and all the fabric is in another, what the heck is in the third box?  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's ANOTHER Bonnie Hunter mystery!  You're kidding me!!!! 

One more Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt

 Yep - looks like everything is included in this box. Extra fabric and hopefully all the components as well. This is Easy Street from 2012. I'm leaving it on the UFO shelf for the moment - perhaps it can become a bonus project? HA - the rate that I'm going, I'll be lucky to finish the 12 projects that are the shelf including the 5 that got carried over from last year!

Easy Street instructions

Now how could one forget working on such a big quilt? Oh well - it is what it is! I'm hoping the magazine schedule will be a little more forgiving this year and that will help a lot. So far, there are two more on the schedule, but not until March and April and both are smaller than I normally do. Yeah!

Speaking of which, one more quilt is done - the 7th finish of the year. I think I got excited the other day and said that that quilt was number 7, but when I checked my book, nope - I've got 7 so far this year. I'm OK with that. But seriously, it's still January and I can't keep them straight - imagine if I waited until the end of the year to figure this all out!  That quilt is now in a box and on its way to its destination.

I really must figure out the best size and shape of the box to ship these quilts. I've sent three recently and each time, the price has increased by $10.Seriously - from $30 to $40 to $50! This is for four-day shipping - all to the US. I'll be spending some time with the box companies and the shipping companies websites to figure out the optimum shipping container size to minimize the cost. The weight of each has been about the same - 4 pounds. Drives me crazy not understanding these things.

I did go to another UPS store yesterday and was much happier with the service. That's the beauty of living in a large city. If you don't like one store, it's easy to go to another within the same distance!

I took pictures of what the others were working on at the Sit n Sew but they're on my phone and the darn cord is still in the car. Must remember to bring that in today.

I'm 30 pages away from finishing The Alienist. Oh boy - what a book. It's a BIG book - small print, 600 pages and the subject matter and style of writing is very hard to read. I've had to go back and reread parts because I missed something. But I knew as it got close to the end, that I would probably "rip" through the pages. However, when I'm tired, I'm tired and that's it - I can't go on. It's a TV series that is supposed to start very soon on TNT. I've no idea what station that is. I won't be watching it, but here is a link to the trailer.  

No quilting this weekend, although three quilts remain to be quilted with deadlines. I've got a date with a computer and a sewing machine and a lot of writing and project making will be happening. All will be revealed on that soon!

Have a super day!

Ciao!