Celtic Solstice Clue #3 - Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

Last week's assignment - that's right I have changed the wording as clue just doesn't seem to fit for me - was twofold.  We had to do half-square triangles up the wazoo and then half of them are sewn into pinwheels.  As you can tell by the date of this, I am still behind but working on catching up this week.  We were pretty busy last week with preparing for Christmas, family activities, and a wonderful sew weekend with my daughter and granddaughter.  That day deserves a post all of it's own and I will have that up shortly after this one.

I had managed to get these cut while I was working on the chevrons in assignment number 2.  I did use the easy angle ruler and 2" strips to cut the triangle pairs.  So let's start putting these puppies together.

I am using "Annie" for these.  She is my wonderful 301A and she zooms through these like they are nothing.  Within no time, I have strings of half square triangles everywhere - over 500 to be precise.

As you can tell from this picture, I had two whole strips of oops --- cut with right sides up on both strips.  Now I have to go and cut more strips and I must cut the wrong on purpose in order to use these triangles.  Grrrr.  Well, I have extras now in case I run into color duplicates in too many places.

Every cloud has a silver lining right?

Once the strings are complete, the new triangles cut and sewn, and a sample pinwheel made, my squares get pressed and then it is off to the office to sit with my sweetie and watch some television while trimming dog ears.  Yes, I am sitting on two different quilt, but they used the same material.  Years ago -- and I do mean YEARS -- I bought a kit BOM from JoAnn's and you had to purchase the fabric on your own and cut, not like the kits of today.  Well, somehow, following the supply list netted me enough leftover fabric to do a log cabin quilt out of the scraps.  Quite the scraps, huh?  The BOM quilt was hand quilted and is hanging over the back of the futon I am sitting on.  The log cabin quilt was tied and is under my -- you can see it a bit better in the second picture.  We keep both quilts here as that way we can both snuggle up while watching television.  (Oh, I say that loosely as we do not own a television.  We simply use our computer to watch what we want and have a tuner that runs through it.)  Goodness but I digress a lot.

It is time to head back out to the studio again and the first task is to make 1/2 of the half square triangles into one half of a pinwheel.  (Say that really quickly:  half, half, half, lol.)  This goes really fast and within an hour all are sewn and pressed.  I can feel the end in sight.

I run the two sides together in about an hours time.  Yes, I pinned each pinwheel at the center in order to "attempt" to get good center.  It still doesn't work well for me -- sometimes I think I have little point gremlins that are inside my machine and gently slide the lower piece of fabric as it passes the needle hole.  They do this just to aggravate me.  BUT -- I am winning the battle -- it's just not as important to me as it used to be.  I make my quilts to use, not to show --- therefore, my points do not have to be perfect.  It alleviates a lot of stress and after all I am pretty sure I do this because it is enjoyable.  Stress is not enjoyable period.

Let's get these opened and pressed.  Hopefully I will love them.  I know I love the orange and yellow together.  That is just full of sunshine to me.

Next up --- sliver trim to make sure we are 3 1/2".  Perfect!

And this step is complete.

As I said in part 2:  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)
                                Step 3:     976 required (yep, you know it -- extra                                       of both units)

Total:  3,580 at this point.

244 Half Square Triangles and 61 pinwheels

Here is the link back to Bonnie's blog for more on this stage.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah or any other special time for you during this holiday season.

On to four patches.