Celtic Solstice Clue #2 - Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

Wow!  Chevrons!  This clue almost beat me.  It seemed to take forever for me to complete it, but I also keep forgetting that regular life, shopping for Christmas, shipping Christmas, doing cards, etc. all need to take place.  For some reason, I am unable to accomplish those things while sitting at my sewing machine.  Drat.

The day the clue came out, we were hit with an ice storm here in Dallas and Mister deemed it too cold and dangerous for me to be out in the studio, so we brought in the cutting implements, mat, rulers, and fabric.  I set up a temp cutting area in the office and set to work.  Here is a look at my chevron process:

After cutting, I needed to draw a diagonal line on each square and then a second line 1/4" away to use as stitching lines.  That meant 1000 squares and 2000 lines.  I set up with a lap table while watching a movie and soon Mister was looking to improve my working conditions.  My fingertips were getting sore from picking up the ruler twice with each square.  He came along with his trusty duct tape and hooked the ruler in place along the edge of my tray and then made a little handle to lift the ruler with each time.  It may not look good, but dang it worked well.  Ingenious Mister.


This took all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I was really glad to see this stage complete.  Monday, I bit the bullet and went out to the studio, cranked up the heat and started in on these puppies.   Step one is to attach the neutral squares to the green rectangles on the diagonal and then to stitch again on the second drawn line.  This nets me a bonus triangle when I trim the seam.  Yay!

It does make the pressing process take a bit longer as well though, as I have to press the chevron seam and the bonus triangle.  Lots of little pieces everywhere.  The picture below is the last of this side of the chevron and as you can see, my container is almost overflowing with bonus HST's.  Too fun!

Same process with the yellow squares and the other chevon half.  Yes, I still need to trim all those dog ears off the bonus triangles, but that is a job for a long drive.

Finally, I am to hook the halves together and get chevrons!

Yes, I am getting nice chevrons and 3 1/2" squares.  Awesome.

The last string is off the machine.  Now all I have to do is press their seams open and then tackle my pile of unacceptables.  I have about 20 re-dos but out of 250, I figure that is not too bad at all.

Yep - 249 completed, beautiful chevrons.  On to clue 3.  (I did take time on Friday, when the clue came out to get it cut, but that is for another post.)

I love how they turned out.  They are truly scrappy and make my heart happy.

Piece count so far:   Step 1:  1,140 required (although I made extra blocks)
                                Step 2:  1,464 required (again, I made extra blocks)

Total:  2,604 at this point.

249 Chevrons and 996 bonus HST's --- What to do with them -- what to do!

Here is the link back to Bonnie for this stage.  Enjoy.  Onto to pinwheels!