Conspicuously Absent

January was a fun month for me.  It was busy and hectic.  Being a bookkeeper in my other life, you might imagine I was busy beyond belief with my client's work.  Your imagination would be correct.  The last big push this week nearly knocked me out.  But I'm still on my feet, and still quilting.

I was able to FMQ 3 quilts this month.  Two still need the bindings finished.  The first two were Project Linus quilt tops given to me by Susan of Susan's Calico Creations.  She said they needed to be finished.  The first one was this cheery bowtie quilt that was all hand pieced!  I put the borders on it and got it quilted in very little time.

 The second one is a 3" charm quilt.  Great colors in this one too.  It's small enough for a baby quilt so I finished it off  with a  plaid backing and rich burgundy binding.

The final one is a baby quilt for my friend Mary Ann's new grandson.  He was born early in September, but is doing well now.  I had a cute Debbie Mumm Noah's Ark print for the backing but wouldn't you know it was just a smidgen too narrow, so I artfully placed a stripe on the back to make it fit.

The Mystery is Solved - Celtic Solstice

Oh my goodness!  I put in a block wrong!  Can you spot it?

Happy New Year!  On New Year's Day, just after midnight EST, Bonnie Hunter revealed the final Celtic Solstice clue that revealed the beautiful Quilt she designed for us.  I am loving the pattern, but the colors are a tad outside my comfort zone. 

Since I was diligently working on Clue 5 still, I did not post last week's progress.  I was able to complete all of steps 2, 3, and 4, with 1 and 5 cut out, but not completed.  Now I have pieces and parts enough for a king-size quilt that will never be completed. 

This is the quilt I am determined to make - a small-ish size quilt that I can snuggle under.  Likely I will use the other parts for other smaller quilts for charity work.  It's bound to make someone smile.

I have seen many color variations of this quilt on others' blogs and am dreaming about making a full or queen size quilt for our guest room or our room, but the orange and yellow?  So not my thing.

I want to take a few minutes to thank Bonnie for all the lessons I learned making this quilt:

• Embrace color.  It gives a quilt a life of its own.
• Get that 1/4" seam exact.  If the blocks are not the right size, do what needs to be done to get them to measure up.  Ok, so some of them had to be trimmed a tiny little bit, but that's likely due to improper cutting.
• Speaking of Cutting:  Measure Twice - Cut once - I have a nice pile of mis-cut pieces to show for my efforts, but not too big.
• Break down complex jobs into bite-size chunks.  Each of the clues was a piece to one of two different blocks.  It was easy to make all the half square triangles and pinwheels, four patches or chevrons together.  At the end when assembling the blocks, I only had to go to the right pile to pull the pieces together.
• Follow directions and diagrams to the letter, but feel free to experiment with colors and methods.  The chevrons kicked my backside - those flippy corners were the pits.  Until I saw on the Monday link-up from Karen in CA who showed us how to use strips to do the same thing.  See her post here.  Thank you Karen!  I was able to crank out the last half of those chevrons in only a couple of days.

This was my first-ever mystery quilt.  I have been excited to be a part of it.  Joining up with the final Mystery Monday Linkup at QuiltVille.  Thank you Bonnie for an exciting month!  I'm going to let this project live on my design wall for a while as  I clean up the extra parts and pieces, straighten up my Quilting Studio, and start working on some other projects I have coming up for this year.  Stay tuned!