Clue 5, and I'm Still Alive!!

I'm keeping right up with the Quiltville "En Provence" Mystery Quilt!  This week's Clue is making some 3 1/2" half square triangles with our dark purples and neutrals.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am running super-low on my dark purples.  So, of course, I did not have enough for this Clue.  I went stash diving, and came up with 2 more dark purple fabrics that I didn't originally include because I felt they weren't dark enough.  Well, good news, boys...you made the cut!  Now get in there!

Bonnie is using her new Essential Triangle Tool for this clue.  I did order her tool, but it is in transit, and I want to do some selfish, non-gift sewing NOW!  So I'm going to bust out my Easy Angle ruler for this:

Yup, the wrapping is still on it!  I found a written tutorial by Bonnie on how to cut strips with this ruler HERE.  She also did a super-helpful video tutorial making HSTs with this ruler for her Celtic Solstice mystery quilt HERE.

Okay, so here's where I freak out.  I hate math.  Like, I really HATE math, because I'm generally not very good at it.  But I put on my big-girl panties, stopped whining (after a while) and figured it out.

So we need 3 1/2" HSTs so that they will end up 3" finished in the quilt.  Alrighty.  Based on Bonnie's info, you need to cut the strips 1/2" larger than your finished measurement (3").  That means I need to cut 3 1/2" strips, one neutral, one purple, right sides together for each HST unit:

That wasn't really too bad!  Of course, once I get Bonnie's Essential Triangle tool, I won't need the Easy Angle ruler, but I'm glad I know how to use it.  Just in case of a triangle emergency.

And TA-DA!  I have 32 units ready to sew (I'm making 1/2 of the required 64):

So, as always, I chain-pieced them through the Featherweight:

And then pressed them in to perfect little units:

I clipped the one little dog ear on each little square, and I'm all done:

I think the new fabrics fit right in, and I'm really digging the reproductions!  I'm off work for the next 2 weeks, so I should have no problems keeping up.  Woot woot!! 

Head on over to the Link Up to see everyone else's progress!  Bonnie used my pic in her collage on the link up page again (the center middle one)!  I'm so giddy! ;-)

But seriously, check it out!  Some of these creative quilters are "guessing" at set ups with the blocks we've made so far, and I'm totally loving some of them!  I need to plan a leader-ender project, and I already know how to make these blocks, so hmmmm...

"Bonus Quilting", or "The Genius That is Leaders-Enders"

A while after I had started quilting, I started noticing that when I began sewing my piecing, usually when there was a seam at the start, the machine would "eat" my fabric and would bunch it all up and create all kinds of bird nest stuff on the back.  So not cool.  

In my internet travels, I learned about using a "Startie-Stoppie".  This was a scrap piece of fabric which you start sewing with, the "Startie".  Once that fabric goes through, you then chain piece your actual quilt top fabric afterward, and then run another scrap through, stopping your needle in the fabric until you're ready to sew again, the "Stoppie".  This means that any fabric-eating would happen for the scrap fabric, and not for your top fabric, because the thread was already properly tensioned for sewing once it got through the scrap. It also means that you could see any thread tension problems on the scrap before it hit your real project.  Lastly, it saves thread because you are only clipping the length between the chain-pieced pieces, not long tails. WIN-WIN-WIN!!

So I was happily Startie-Stoppie'ing along, clogging up scrap fabrics with thread and tossing them out when they were full.  Until I read THIS LIFE-CHANGING POST by that genius we all know and love, Lori Holt :-).  Go read it now...I'll wait :-)

OMG, right?!?  So basically, instead of using scrap fabric for your Startie-Stoppies, you plan ahead and actually piece another quilt between your main quilt project(s)!!!  Lori mentions fellow genius Bonnie Hunter's book on this subject called "Leaders and Enders", so check out Bonnie's blog "Quiltville" and click on her free patterns, and tutorials and everything else wonderful over there!  She is the queen of scrappy quilting.  I got her book, and it's brilliant!   

So, I planned a super-simple sampler quilt to try out this idea.  I busted out my Sizzix Big Kick machine, my 2 1/2" HST die, and cut up pieces of fabric I got from a Moda Scrap Bag.

This fabric is "Farmhouse" by Fig Tree & Co., and I paired it with Kona "Bone".  Nothing is simpler than HST's, right?  So I settled on a "Shoo-Fly", a 9-patch, a "Friendship Star", and a whirly-gig design that I don't the name of :-).  I think I'll just sew them all together diagonally (like in my colored lay-out in the pic below), but that's subject to change!

I keep all of my Bonus Quilt materials close-by and handy in a little basket next to my sewing machine.  I've been sewing them since December 2015, and they've helped me through 3 quilt tops now, as well as between the borders of my current "Bloom" blocks:

I didn't think to take pics until the heart baby quilt, so here's the Bonus Quilt in action:

Startie

Main quilt fabric

Stoppie

And as easy as that, I am now almost done with all of my blocks:

I'm still not 100% sure on the final layout, but I'll have fun playing around with options.  I bought some "Farmhouse" yardage to use as a border, so I'm excited to see how this one ends up.

In the spirit of full disclosure, this method obviously takes longer than just grabbing random scrap fabric for Startie-Stoppies because you're actually having to pre-plan, and you have to pay attention when actually making up your blocks.  But I think that little bit of extra effort to get a super-awesome bonus quilt is soooo worth it, don't you?

I've also heard of quilters working on multiple sections of their quilt top simultaneously with this method.  For example, if planning a 4-patch border, they would do those squares as Leaders-Enders, so when the main quilt top was done, the border would be done, or close to done, at the same time.  Quilters are so brilliant!

Lil Sew & Sew

So my family went on a little camping trip from So Cali to Sedona, Arizona in our RV.  As you saw from last post, I packed a cute little travelling set up:

Hubby always does the driving, and since there was over 6 hours of drive time, I snuck to the back of the RV, and put the Lil Sew & Sew to work on the little kitchen table:

I had pre-cut my charm squares with my Sizzix die cut machine for 2 1/2" HST's (LOVE that thing!), so I was ready to just chain sew these together.  It was a little sketchy at times, especially with how the hubster drives, but I was able to keep a pretty straight stitch, and sewed all of my HST's together on the way there.  YAY!

Our first night there, we had down time toward the end of the night, so I busted out my cute little iron and set up a pressing station:

Worked perfectly!  So I got a nice little stack of squares all ready to sew into leaf blocks.  Because camping quilts should have leaves in them.

The next morning, I was super-excited to start sewing my blocks.  I sewed the stem blocks using a technique that Lori Holt of "A Bee In My Bonnet" fame demonstrated HERE.  Lori's awesome, and I have plans to start her Bloom Sew Along soon.  Check her out!  Anyway, her stem block was a little tricky on this little machine, but I was able to make them work.

So freaking cute!!!  However, my Lil Sew & Sew decided it didn't want to play anymore, and it started skipping stitches.  Badly.  After much trial and error, I figured out that the bobbin shuttle wasn't picking up the top thread every time.  I've tried a bunch of different remedies as per the power of Google, but it is still skipping.  So it's sitting in its box until I feel like trying to figure out why it's being bad.  But I had Plan B, which was my hand-piecing project, and I was able to get my sewing fix the old fashioned way...thank goodness for low tech options! :-).

And in case you've never been to Sedona, perhaps these gorgeous pics will inspire you to make a trip: