Working on Easy Street

And having a blast!

Who ever thought that machine quilting could be so much fun!

It is not easy to quilt this one but thanks to one of the Craftsy classes I took about machine quilting (as well as some encouragement from my friend Mary) I have attempted to quilt "Easy Street".

The quilting has been getting better as I have been going along.  It will never be a quilt worthy of judging and maybe not of show quality.  But it will be mine from start to finish.  Okay, so it is someone else's pattern ( thank you Bonnie Hunter for your mystery quilts), but it was my choice of colors and my workmanship and that makes me proud.

Just had to share!

New Quilts

Here are some quilts that have been recently finished.  They will be available in my Etsy shop soon or at Maxwell's Made in America.  You can check them out at those sites in February.

 

Sawtooth Star

 

Butterfly Mystery Quilt

 

 

9 Patch

 

Snail's Trail

Just received the new quilt rack the other day.  It make it sooo easy to take pictures now.  Four more UFO projects finally completed!

Couldn't resist taking a picture of Easy Street on the new rack.  Now I can't decide if I really want to put on those borders or leave it as it is.  I do know that purple will be the binding however I do end up finishing this quilt.

Easy Street # 1 Completed

It has been fun working on Easy Street. The first version is now complete. Thank you, Bonnie for providing the directions and a month's worth of enjoyable sewing.

Easy Street - Almost There!

I was assembling the rows for Easy Street and stopped for a break to check email and blogs. Imagine my surprise when I read Bonnie Hunter's latest blog where she says that the linky for Easy Street will close tonight! I thought I had two more days!

Hurry up and finish or do the post!

I chose doing the post.

Here it is.

Half on the design floor...

 

 

And half on the design bed...

 

 

Completed top tomorrow at the latest!


Easy Street has been a blast!

Here is the link to Bonnie's page where you can see blogs that show other Easy Street quilts that are being made.  Enjoy!

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2013/01/mystery-monday-link-up-jan-7th.html


The completed top!

Living on Easy Street - Heading toward the finish

And working on it day by day!

My Easy Street #1 Quilt is still progressing.

Somehow the blocks seem to be multiplying! I do one block, paying attention to my piecing to make sure all seams match, then place it on my design floor. I look for the next block to piece, count what is left to do and it seems as if the number left to do does not decrease. I thought I could count to 25 but apparently not. LOL!!!

It does look nice and I am pleased with the fabric, colors and arrangement. Thank you Bonnie for another wonderful Mystery Quilt for 2012 - 2013.

One half done....

Hey, did you notice my shoes?
I guess that's why I love the colors Bonnie chose for Easy Street so much!

Easy Street - Part 5

Completed!
It has been a struggle this week to find sewing time. After being away for 5 days, having Christmas Eve celebrations at my house and recovering from a nasty cold, there never seemed to be any time for sewing.

However, today was different. DH went to the office and the house was all mine!

I succeeded in finishing TWO sets of the Part 5 little "houses". Somehow I can' t quite figure out how they are supposed to be turkeys - so I am calling them houses.

I also baked a cake for DH whose birthday is tomorrow. Not a bad day's work.

I am really liking the colors for Easy Street, even though the picture below seems to have muddied the purples.

Can't wait for Step 6!

Easy Street Part 4

The directions came out this morning for Part 4 of Bonnie Hunter's newest Mystery. I have been busy cutting the pieces for the next 64 flying geese and the 145 squares measuring 3.5 inches. The newest flying geese use the turquoise fabrics as the wings and the purple fabrics for the geese triangles. The squares are from the greens and this is the first time we are using these fabrics for the quilt.

I am working as working as quickly as I can on this step. We will be busy this week and I will probably not finish Part 4 before Part 5 is released.

You can check everyone's progress by going to Bonnie's site through the link below.

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-4.html

Here are the pictures thus far!



Have a great weekend!

Easy Street - Part 3

Easy Street is proving to be easy! I know Bonnie said it would be an easy mystery, but some how I could not quite grasp that it actually would be.

So here are pictures of the Step 3 units. 64 blocks of the unit I have seen called "Mary's Triangles". I also need to cut the four triangles of the green to complete this step. Deciding which green to use is the challenge.

Bonnie Hunter's video of working with the Easy Angle ruler and her pictures of assembling the units in Step 3 contributed to the ease of assembling these units in this step. There is quite a bit of bias on the triangles we are working with in this step and the units are small so it can be tricky. I found that the video for cutting and the directions for piecing helped immensely.

Thank you Bonnie for your excellent directions!

Here is the link to the link up page for Easy Street - Part 3.

 quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-3.html

It is fascinating to see all of the interpretations of fabric choices everyone is using for their quilts. I hope you enjoy viewing everyone's progress as I have.

Easy Street has been so easy.  I couldn't resist making a second. The progress on this version is slower but I am pleased with the background print which will be a constant as is the grey.  I have all pieces cut for version two which promises to be as nice as version one!

Easy Street - Part 2

Update on Easy Street

 

I finished sewing all of the flying geese yesterday and pressed most this morning.

I also cut the 64 rectangles measuring 2 inches by 3.5 inches.

 

 

Now to remove the stray threads and the little dog ears.

 

128 flying geese (plus a few extras) and a 192 four patches (plus a few extra)

and 64 rectangles

 

Up to date with Easy Street!

 

Here is the link to Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street Part 2 linky.

 

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-2.html

 

Nice to see everyone's progress!

Waiting for Step 2

I am participating in Bonnie Hunter's new mystery , "Easy Street". I have all of Step 1 complete, 192 (plus) four patches. So while I have been waiting for Step 2 (which comes out Friday morning) I have been catching up on the Barrister's Block Sow-A-Long (and a few other projects too). Since I started working on this only two months ago and the group started in February of this year, I am considerably behind.  But I am trying to catch up. 

Here are the blocks I finished this week.

This group is from the March Sow-A-Long blocks.

Broken dishes - Wannabe! 
I mixed up the block as I was putting it together. 
That will teach me not to look at the directions. 
Guess I will just have to make another one.



 

Shoo Fly

 

 

Churn Dash

 

I also managed to complete a few pinwheels and a 5.5 inch block with half square triangles.  These blocks will go into the "someday" bin - someday the blocks will be used in a quilt.  All of these were made from the corners of various flying geese units and were previously pieced as leaders and enders.

 

 

 

 

It has been fun accomplishing all of this while waiting for Step 2. 

Is it Friday yet???

Easy Street - Part 1

Part 1 of Easy Street is progressing nicely! By the end of today, all 192 ( and maybe a few more!) of the 4 patches will be completed.

 Some are complete now.

A few need to be finished. 

After a few errands this morning, the afternoon will be free for piecing and pressing.  

Can' t wait for Step 2 on Friday.

Here's a link to Bonnie Hunter's post where you can see everyone's progress.

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/11/easy-street-monday-link-up-1.html

Working on "Easy Street"

Yes it is easy to piece 4 patches.  It is not easy to decide which grey, which whites or whatever else manages to show up and demands to be used to make those 4 patches.
So far I have 50 matched pairs of a one yard piece of grey that was just "lying" around waiting to be used matched with black and whites from my stash and my friend Mary's stash.  (She is making "Easy Street" also.)  There are enough strips to make the other 192 four patches that are needed in this step.

But that is the problem!  The directions call for 2 yards and, as DH says, I am probably going to need it somewhere else in another, later step.  So I will need additional grey yardage if that happens.

So into the stash we went.

We also managed to clear out two trash bags full of stuff from my craft room that will never be used again.  Things like dried up tubes of glitter paint, old clothes (nothing suitable for quilt making), and some old patterns for clothing that looked like someone snacked on them at one time.  I only hope the snacking took place in the last century in one of my former homes!

But eventually DH found this 3 yard piece of grey which matched the 4 yard piece of white with shimmering flowers printed on it that I had found last week.  And guess what, the second "Easy Street" quilt was born.

 

Now if I can only keep it to two "Easy Street" quilts!

You never know know easy the next steps will be!