Easy Street Mystery

I contemplated for some time whether or not I was going to participate in this year's Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.  I completed last years mystery (Orca Bay) and managed to keep up with most of the steps but it was very labour intensive and knowing Bonnie's penchant for scrappy quilts with a gazillion pieces I wasn't sure I was up to it this year.  However, Bonnie has assured us that this year's mystery is not going to be as intensive as in previous years (hence the name Easy Street!) so I decided to follow along.

My one concession is to make the quilt a bit smaller.  I am going to make a wall hanging so will only need to make half the quantity that Bonnie posts.

I am also taking a leap of faith in relation to my colour choices.  I once saw a beautiful paisley fabric that I fell in love with.  It comprised browns, oranges and yellows together with a hint of blue.  Now I know that might not sound good but I just loved it so I am going to try to emulate that with this mystery.

Here are my fabric selections:

I have decided to use the blue as my constant and use a solid off white as my background fabric.
I have completed Part 1 - 100 x 4-patches.

Make sure you check out everyone else's progress and great colour choices here: easy-street-monday-link-up-1

Bring on Part 2!

Back on Track

Ok - I have been off the grid for a while but finally I am getting back on track.

Whilst I haven't been posting I have been busy in the sewing room practicing my free motion quilting skills on a real quilt.  Way back in weeks 19 & 20 of Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project we made a Modern Quilt top to practice our stitching.  I did make the quilt top but never got around to the actual quilting.  Something always got in the way or another project took precedence.  I am happy to report that I finally finished the quilting and I am really pleased with how it turned out.  I used the principals taught to us by Leah Day as well as those taught to us by Angela Walters back in July with SewCalGal's Free Motion Quilting Challenge.   

Excuse the wavy bottom, the door handles on the wall where I hung the quilt got in the way.
Here are a few close up pictures of the quilting.

Now that that is out of the way, I am trying to catch up with Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and I managed to finish Weeks 30-33 where Leah focused on pivoting designs.
Here are a couple of pictures of my efforts.

First we did Paisley.  I love Paisley and feel very comfortable doing this design.

Next we did Lava Paisley.  It took me a few attempts to get my head around this one.  I wobbled too much at first and that made the design look a bit too messy for my taste.  Once I did more relaxed "wobbles" I liked the design much better.

Next up came another pivoting design called Snake Paisley.  This too took me a few attempts and I found I always ended up with odd areas to fill in.  I love the overall effect though and can see myself using this design again.

And the final pivot design we did was called Pointy Paisley.  I love, love, love this design and although I did have trouble keeping my lines straight, I really like the effect and the thread play with this design.

So that's it for pivoting designs.  This week I hope to catch up on Weeks 34-38 which concentrate on Edge to Edge Designs.  I have read through all the tutorials and they look reasonably simple.  Now having said that I am bound to be tripped up.  It's always the deceptively simple ones that I have the most trouble with!

Happy quilting everyone.

Sue