On Ringo Lake(A Podunk Picnic) Finish

 Finishing a Quiltville Mystery is a major accomplishment in my quilting world.  I don't typically make quilts with so many little pieces.  Bonnie style of quilting is a little bit more classic/traditional than my style.  Every once in awhile it's good to get out of the comfort zone.

The challenge isn't just in the tiny pieces that are for the most part cut individually.  Choosing fabrics for a mystery can be challenging since I almost always change the colors.  Thank goodness she gives us a month to choose fabrics before the first clue is released.  It usually takes that long for me to commit to a color pallet.   My scrap bins are not over flowing with my pallet of choice.  So when I make a Bonnie quilt I'm cutting from scraps all the way up to yardage.

I'm not one of those quilters who counts how many prints or how many pieces are in a quilt but I can tell you there is A LOT of both in mine.  One of the good things about finally finishing this quilt is I can finally put all those larger pieces of fabric back in my stash cabinet.

Quilting this beauty went fairly quick since I chose to to almost 100% free motion.  My quilting plan was to keep the quilting fairly light.  I had an idea but the idea didn't work, so I just added a little more quilting until I was satisfied with the look of the quilting.  My plan was to only quilt in the white areas and the yellow sashing pieces.  In my mind it looked great but once on the quilt it left to much poof in the corners of the blocks.  Adding quilting to the yellow and green areas of each corner balanced out the quilting and pleased my picky eyes.  I also hadn't planned to do feathers in the border.  The plan was for straight line ruler work.  But feathers are quicker so feathers it is.  

The backing is pretty boring compared to the front of the quilt.   Just one happy little yellow heart for the label.  I've recently started adding the label to the backing before quilting the quilt.  This is a sure fire way to make sure the label is never removed.  It also seems to be faster than adding after quilting the quilt.  The white fabric on the back was also used for the binding.  I love how the white binding lets the quilt just fade off instead of having an abrupt ending frame.

The backing was two pieces of yardage I already had in the stash.  I was planning on a yellow floral but it was just too much yellow.  

My quilt labels for the last year or so have been simple white squares with a frame using scraps of fabric from the quilt.  This time I decided to get a little wild and crazy and make a cute little heart block.  I've also put together a quilt label making kit.  In my kit is everything I need to make the same size label for every quilt.  Anyone interested in how to make a quilt label kit?  

A Podunk Picnic is ready to be cuddled and loved.  I can't wait to put her on the guest bed later in the week.  So you'll probably see it at least one more time this week.  But for now it's time to just relax and enjoy the snow. Playtime, Let's make a Snowman!

Yes my friends I love snow.  It's so pretty.  Podunk in winter is brown.  Brown grass, brown trees, brown farm fields all around us.  BROWN with gray skies.  The pretty white snow brightens things up a bit and gives me and Mr. Podunk the opportunity to let our inner child come out to play.  Every year we try to make at least one snowman.  I make the bottom ball of snow and he makes he top two balls since they are too heavy for me to lift.  Dried up coneflowers for the eyes, dried gaillardia for the nose and a brick chip for the mouth.  Mr. Podunk made the arms and I added the accessories.  It was Mr. Podunk's idea to add the sign. 

The sign was a birthday gift from my best quilting buddy Bev.  I've been a quilter for 30+ years but this blog began in 2011.  Wow, it's hard to believe I've been chatting away about quilting for 10 yrs. 

My Word of the Year

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A Friday Flimsy and Cleaning The Quilter

 Happy Friday Quilting Friends!  First I want to thank all of you who shared your thoughts on naming this quilt.  It's unanimous, she will officially be named A Podunk Picnic.  You all know me well and have chosen the perfect quilt name. 

Bonnie's mystery quilts are usually inspired by an event of some sort throughout the year.  One year she went to China and the quilt that year was inspired by all the colors she saw during her visit.  And since this one is called On Ringo Lake, I'm pretty sure she visited Ringo lake in 2016 or 17.  Her Ringo quilt was made with teal, brown, white and salmon fabrics.  Perfect colors for a lake quilt.

Click on image to purchase pattern.

Thursday evenings adventure of the quilt onto the quilt frame.

Before quilting A Podunk Picnic I need to do a little preventative maintenance on my quilter.   The quilter has been setting unused and uncovered since early September. I think I've only quilted one quilt since September but it was quilted on my domestic machine.

My quilter isn't some big fancy machine with bells and whistles.  She's a Bailey Home Quilter 15.  I've made a ton of modifications to this machine over the last 10 years to make her work the way I want her too.  The only fancy feature she has is a stitch regulator but it isn't as responsive as the newer stitch regulators on the big girl machines.

The manufacturer of this machine suggests oiling the bobbin area in between each bobbin used. I don't usually do that unless the machine sounds or acts like it needs it.  They also suggest oiling the bearing behind the bobbin area often.  When I talked to the owner of the company on the phone he suggested I oil after ever quilt because at the time I was quilting quilts to death.  These days I don't quilt my quilts to death but I still like to keep her oiled and running smoothly.  Taking it apart and oiling it between each quilt is much easier than having it lock up with a quilt on the frame.  Been there, done that and it's a chore.  You have 2 choices when that happens.  1. Take the quilt off the frame and oil it.  2. Leave the quilt on the frame and oil it.  It only took one time of doing #2 and getting oily black gunk on my quilt to change my mind about oiling in between each quilt.

Clearing out the gunk on the bearing is the worst part.  One or two drops of oil on the bearing and let my machine run for about 15 minutes.  Here's the oil I use to get into those tricky spots.  Before I found this I was trying to put a few drops of oil in a drinking straw to try to reach the inner workings of the machine.  Oh boy did I make a mess. This loosens up all the gunk.  Then once it's nice and warm I speed up the machine it throws the gunk everywhere.  Again it only takes one time of throwing gunk everywhere and you learn to cover the bearing with a rag or scrap fabric.  Could you imagine having this on your pretty new quilt top?  My goodness she was a dirty girl.

Cleaning the machine from start to finish takes about 2 hours.  While it sits idling and loosening up the gunk I dust and clean other areas of the machine and frame.  At last I can start loading the quilt backing.  With a pieced backing I like to have my seams running horizontal.  Vertical seams can cause puckering issues about halfway through a quilt.   You would think that it was as easy as pinning it on and rolling it up onto the bars.  NOPE.  I roll it up on the front bar, then roll it all onto the back bar and then back to the front bar.  Hopefully by this time the seams are lining up perfectly straight with the front bar.  As you can see in the picture below this one is perfect.  Yah!  I can get this girl loaded and based down before bedtime.

Oh but there's a snag in the works.  GRRR.  My quilt top is 75 x 90.  The only batting on hand is 72 x 90.  Sigh.  I could dig through the scraps of batting and make a franken-batting but it's late, I'm tired and I hate piecing batting.  Looks like I'm done for the day and there's going to be a road trip in the morning.

Oh well, I need to catch up on my reading of the book 

"Earthing, the most important health discovery ever"  

Boy what a long title.  When I was younger my books of choice were by Steven King, John Grisham, Danielle Steel and V.C Andrews.  I wasn't too picky as you can see by the list of authors.  These days novels bore me to death.  So I read books that teach me something.  I wish I had this love of learning when I was younger but that's a story for another day.  

Earthing?  What is it?  To sum it up short and sweet it's about putting your bare feet on the ground outside and the health benefits of doing so.  Who knew this is so important.  If your interested and would like to know more without reading, here's a link to the free documentary on Youtube.  It'll give you the basics in about an hour. 

I've been Earthing, also called Grounding, for a little over a month.  To my shock there have been some changes.  Could it be a placebo effect? Possibly.

  But here's what I've noticed.  Top of the list is I sleep more than 2 hours at a time.  For years(all my life) my sleep has been very little at a time.  Now I sleep 7-8 hours with one bathroom break. 

 As a quilters we stand or sit for very long periods of time.  For me the sitting causes leg swelling and the standing causes back pain.  Since grounding while doing either and grounding while sleeping, my swelling and pain have been reduced.  Especially the morning roll and groan to get out of bed.  It was a shock to me the first time I woke up and just got out of bed.  I didn't notice.  I had made it to the coffee pot one morning before it dawned on me how I just popped out of bed, dressed, made through the house without groaning in pain or running into anything. 

I could ramble on all day about this topic but I've got a batting run to make this morning.

  Hope you all have a Yippy Skippy day!

 

Happy Stitching!

I haven't joined in with a linky party in a long time.  While reading quilting blogs this morning I saw this one and thought " What the heck, lets link up!"  Hop on over, you might find a new to blog or a must make to add to the ever growing list.

http://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/2021/02/suitable-for-framing-finish-and.html

 

  

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Leaders and Enders Design Ideas

 Okay I'll admit it, I jumped into this leaders and enders thing with absolutely no idea what I was going to make with them.  The fabrics were already cut so I just started sewing them together.  Making the process a habit was my only concern.  Now that I'm nearing the end of my little stash of blue and yellow squares I need a plan before going any further.  And that plan needs to fit into what I've already haphazardly sewn together.

These squares were leftover from a simple charm quilt I made last year. 

The thought has crossed my mind to make pillow shams to match my Simply Summer quilt above but a quilt would be a lot more fun.   Who knows I may still go that direction.  But for now playing around with ideas is just part of my process.  Cutting more squares isn't a problem.  I've tons more blue scraps in my older scrap stash.  The yellow scrap bin is almost empty but I could always cut from my yardage.

In my spare time over the last few days I drew up some ideas for the scraps.  The two quilts on the top are the ones I'm leaning towards.  They are quick and easy and require only cutting background fabric.  Do I want to make this a HUGE project and cut more squares?  Maybe.  Only time will tell. 

Another thing is quilt math.  Ugg...I love designing quilts but the quilt math sometimes is a real chore.  Mindlessly sewing and cutting using someone else's pattern sounds much nicer.  And who is the queen of scrap quilting patterns?  Well Bonnie Hunter of course!  I pulled out every Bonnie book I own.  So many beautiful quilts but I'm looking for just the right pattern for my already pieced squares.  I found 2 that look promising and require tons more cutting.  In both she has a light dark theme going on in the squares but I could still use mine even though they are mostly just blue.

Then I remembered Bonnie had recently released a new stand alone pattern in blues.  Her Winter Blues pattern would be perfect for the blues and would also put a big dent in my blue scrap bins.  I don't have a ton of low volume background prints in my stash but I do have a ton of different white scraps with no print or tone on tone.  This is looking promising.  If you're interested in this Winter Blues quilt pattern you can find it here in Bonnies Shop.  If I use this pattern it will  mean I'll need to find another quilt pattern for the yellows.  Decisions, decisions....oh look a squirrel!....LOL!  My mind is constantly jumping around.  It'll all come together eventually.

For now it's back the studio to work on my On Podunk Pond(On Ringo Lake) quilt by Bonnie. Well, maybe it's time for a little self care.  I've got this going on today.  My bed head was tickling my face so I grabbed a the paintbrush I use for starching applique and fixed the problem.

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~ Bonnie Hunter 2019 Mystery ~ Frolic ~

Autumn is the best time of year.  I love the cooler temperatures, the warm colors in nature and the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt.  This year the mystery quilt is called Frolic.  The clues for the quilt are FREE while the quilt along is in progress. So be sure to save the free PDF's to your computer each week.  Yes! each week.  That's why I like this mystery quilt.  It moves along at a much faster pace than most.  Once a month quilt alongs are a quilt killer in my world.  I lose interest.

Bonnie's quilt along (in my opinion) has the largest following of quilters.  Have you seen her Facebook Group of quilters?  If not you really need to join, if nothing else just so you can look at beautiful quilts everyday of the year. You can join the Quiltville Open Studio here.  Word of warning, you will need to answer a few questions to get in the group.  If you don't know the answer just Google the question. 

From now until around February the group is almost all about the mystery quilt.  No two quilts are the same.  Bonnie is the master of teaching quilters to quilt from their scraps.  Of course not everyone has a huge stash of scraps so it's totally fine to purchase fat quarters or yardage.  Many of Bonnie's followers are new quilters wanting to learn new techniques.  The mystery quilt is just as beautiful in the 4 or 5 colors done in yardage.

I've completed 2 Bonnie Mystery Quilts.  The first one I made was En Provence. You can purchase the pattern here.  The quilt below is Bonnie's Hunters quilt.

This one is mine and is my favorite.  I changed the colors to my happy and brights.

So many of my Lakehouse DryGoods prints.  

Then last years mystery called Good Fortune.  Bonnie's quilt below.  The pattern can be purchased here.

But you know me, I can't make a quilt as written.  My instinct is to make it my own even if that is only color change.  Mr. Podunk loves a new quilt every so often.  This is his colors that he calls "more manly".

Here's a quick run down of how the mystery quilt happens every year.  

1.  End of October Bonnie shares the colors and the fabric requirements.  This years intro post can be found here.

2.  Black Friday is the first cutting an piecing clue.

3.  New clue every week until late December or early January.

That's it! Short and sweet and to the point.  Of course there's rules and suggestions but she has laid all that out in the link above in #1.

Now it's time to do some fabric pulling and petting. My oldest and least used scraps are in these bins.  Honestly I don't think I've looked in these since the last Bonnie mystery.  I have added a few scraps to them over the year.  A quick look in these and YUK.  

 

Let's change things up a bit and look through my favorite fabric cabinet.

Here's my color plan.  It's really close to Bonnie's.  You'll need to hop over to her blog to see her plan.

The top shelf takes care of 3 colors. 

The blues are already together as well!  This has been the easiest mystery fabric pull to date.

And should I need more.  Well there's plenty of fun prints hiding out in these bundles.  That's that, all done.  It didn't require much work but I think I still deserve a piece of chocolate for mental effort.

#quiltvillemysteryquilt #frolicmysteryquilt #mysteryquilt #bonniehunterquilt

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