QAL: The Unconventional and Unexpected: Overlapping Octagons

I've decided to join in The Unconventional and Unexpected Quilt A-Long . The QAL is being hosted by Sujata Shah, whose work I have admired since I bought her book,  "Cultural Fusion Quilts". The inspiration for this QAL comes from the book "The Unconventional and Unexpected", by Roderrick Kiracofe. For more information check Sujata's posts on The Root Connection. I have chosen to start with the quilt "Overlapping Octagons".

I decided to join in after much deliberation. After all, "Do I really need another project?" "Yes", I answered myself, "You have to move on and this will be a new challenge."

My fabric choice is this:
 

blue and neutrals: a bulging bucket of blues and the right hand pile in the box. My supply of neutrals is very low, and in need of urgent replenishment.

with a few splashes of:

orange: starting with the scraps on the left.

Yesterday I started sewing blue strip scraps together along the short ends as leaders and enders in another project. These will be chopped and sewn together with others to make the string rectangles in the Overlapping Octagons. I shall be ordering more neutrals/ low volume during next week.

My plan is to cut the fabric freehand with the rotary cutter, although I shall be piecing the strips on phone book pages to keep them stable, as I can't manage to cut on the grain freehand, and would like to avoid wobbles and bubbles!

I'm already enjoying this project and look forward to sharing information and progress with others at Basket full of Scraps.

I'm linking to

Click on the button above to see more works in progress.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune: the last stage

 Last Friday Bonnie Hunter revealed the final layout for "Good Fortune", this winter's mystery quilt. I only made a few units each week, and have just joined a few of them into blocks this week.

I still have some green and blue units, but don't have enough units at the moment to make another red/orange block.

I like how the little red squares in the four-patches make a pyramid shape with the orange strings. A pyramid? Well it could even be a pagoda, with a stretch of the imagination. Or perhaps they are all steps on the Great Wall!

In the coming week I shall try to find the time to make a couple more blocks, and turn this into a table runner, or a sewing machine cover.

I enjoyed making this and seeing so many lovely colour schemes in the link-up each week.

I'm linking to:

 

 

Click on the button to see more Good Fortune progress. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal: January

My goal this month is to make a larger version of the "Wee Braw Bag" (muckle braw bag?) pattern by Laura Cunningham (IG @laura_zuckerkuss).

Laura's pattern is in two sizes of which this is the larger, but I need something larger than this one I made in December, to hold my knitting. This is all right for socks and beanies, but cardigans and sweaters? No!!! For the moment this can house the pattern and the tools, but not the knitting itself.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to see other people's goals for this month. 

I wish you all the best in 2019 with lots of  happy sewing!

Marly.

Finish Along 2019 Q1

I'm glad Sandra has published a form on which we can track our progress on the FAL projects. I completely forgot to post about one of the projects on my Q4 list in 2018; not one single post, even though I had a finish. I think Sandra's list will prevent such an oversight in future.

RSC 2018 Squares Away

My list for the next three months:

1. RSC18 quilt (Squared Away), ie layer, quilt, bind and label
2. Beekeeper cardigan: one sleeve to go!
3. On Ringo Lake: Quiltville Mystery 2017
4. Not so wee "Wee braw bag": large enough to hold a top-down sweater in the make
5. bento bag

Number 3 still needs lot of work, so maybe I'll not get it finished this quarter. We'll see! The rest should be achievable.

I'm linking up to:

Click on the button to see more projected finishes this quarter.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune Clue 5

Yes, 5! I have looked at 6, and I've even cut a few strings, while straightening edges for the clue 5 pieces. However Christmas week is always extra busy (and I know I'm not the only one) so I haven't got any further with this winter's Quiltville Mystery Quilt, "Good Fortune" than making some of last week's pieces. I also made some more of clue 2 as leaders and enders in clue 5. Perhaps that's an advantage of being behind!

15 pieces for clue 5; where's the one that got away?

As I was making these in pairs, one right- and one left-facing, I was very surprised to have one large blue triangle left over. Where did the other pair of triangles get to, I wonder! I'm not about to move the furniture to look for it now, so that's all of clue 5 for the moment.

As to clue 6, I'm happy that Bonnie gave the option to make the pieces from strings as I'm very low on neutral fabric, but I do have a bag dedicated to the off- cuts from straightening fabric before I start cutting for regular patchwork. I should be able to fill at least one telephone-book page from there, I hope before Friday.

I'm linking to:

So click on the button to see how other's have made clue 6 pieces.

I wish everyone all the best in 2019, especially

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune clue 4

24 orange string blocks as specified in clue 4 of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, "Good Fortune". Well, actually Bonnie specified more than 24, but I'm just not able to spend so much time on the mystery this year.

24 string blocks

Once I'd cut the strings it didn't take much time, and as I still have plenty of strings there are more rectangles to come.

I'm linking up to the Monday link-up (on Wednesday!) at

and at the weekend to:



 Click on the button to see more quilty happiness.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune clue 3

Last Friday Bonnie Hunter posted clue 3 of this year's Quiltville mystery, "Good Fortune". This involved making lots of rectangles with folded corners and their bonus HSTs.

24 "bonus" HSTs

 from:

12 parallelograms

As in the two previous clues I only made a slight fraction of the number given in the pattern.

I found it very time consuming sewing just to the side of the drawn lines on the squares. I tried to sew with the left-hand inside edge of the presser foot just touching the left-hand side of the line. I found myself being mesmerised by the motion of the needle resulting in a wobbly line. Of the first batch I had to unpick some of the stitching as the lines had wobbled too close together.  The next phase is cutting three-eighths of an inch from the line between the lines. That's why not wobbling is so important! (If that is confusing check out Bonnie's instructions in clue 3.)

I see in the link-up that there are bloggers there who have already finished this clue completely. At this rate I wouldn't be finished before the end of the year! It's not a problem, I'll just plod on fitting this in when I can and working on each new clue as it's published each week.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to join the link-up.

Happy sewing

Marly.