Monday Design Wall

Good Morning!  What a Monday morning we are having here in Illinois!  Freezing rain is falling along with winds gusting to 40 miles an hour.  As I sit here at my kitchen island looking out the back door, ice is forming on the deck and wire fencing.  The weatherman is predicting 1/4" to 1/2" of ice coating forming on everything.  I am just praying that we don't loose power.  We may also receive about an inch of snow.  We are spoiled here as we have had a pretty mild winter to this point.

Yesterday we had a quiet day at home after having a large Christmas gathering here on Christmas Day.  We served about 14 family and friends dinner and later played dominoes.

After getting home from church yesterday, I spent the day cutting fabric for Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt, Allietare.  You can find the free pattern and directions HERE.  I worked on cutting the 296 half-square triangles for Clue #1 using the constant grey and neutrals.

 As I am cutting the neutrals, I was also cutting the 2" x 4 1/2" rectangles for Clue#2 and the 3 1/2" x 7 1/2" rectangles for Clue #3.  Some of the neutrals I pulled out to use were less than a fat quarter of fabric.  After cutting the above units, if there was any fabric leftover, I cut it up to fit my storage system, i.e. odd size strips go in the string bin,  2" square, 1 1/2" squares and crumbs.

 

I am really excited to be using up some of the fabric and not returning it to my drawers.  First of all, its exciting to have stash that you can pull from (its taken a long time to get to this point).  Second, I like when I use up a piece of fabric (makes room to go shopping).  Third, I have enjoyed seeing the wide selection of neutrals I have been collecting.  I try to be frugal when shopping and only by fabric with a purpose to go with a specific pattern or project.  Neutrals are my one "freebie" when shopping.  This means, I allow myself to always myself to shop for neutrals without guilt.

 

My sewing/texting buddy, Cathy and I have agreed to work on this Mystery quilt together.  We have swapped fabrics.  She also helped me out by giving me the constant grey for the project as a Christmas present.  She was traveling and visiting her daughters out West and was shop hopping.  I was so excited about receiving the fabric as I was being a good girl, staying home and finishing customer quilts.  She is farther along than I am on the quilt but its not a race.  I want to enjoy the experience.  My goal it to have the clues cut out before going to a quilting weekend on January 15th.  My plan is to quilt on customer quilts during the day and work on cutting in the evenings.  Yesterday I made great progress.  The advantage of being behind, I have all the clues printed and can cut all the neutrals at once for each clue.  I don't think I have ever cut a whole quilt out before starting to sew. 

 

Today I am joining Quiltville's Bonnie Hunter's Monday Linkup, Monday Making at Love, Laugh, Quilt, Cynthia at Oh Scrap! and Judy at Patchwork Times. 

 

Have a marvelous Monday!  Be safe out there as you travel in this wintery mix of weather.

 

Yours in quilting,

Terry