I might just write all my blog posts about this quilt in French.  I could do it!  I took 8 years of French! Actually, I’ve forgotten entirely too much; I can still read it pretty well but writing it is another matter.

I almost signed up for Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt last year; I didn’t and I later regretted it after I saw how pretty it was.  This mystery quilt has everything.  First, it’s free, free, free! Second, it uses scraps and while she has suggested colors you can change it to whatever you want.  Third, it’s traditional piecing which is my favorite.

You can get all the details at Bonnie’s site here.  The short story is every Friday starting today through I think around mid-January (so about 6-8 weeks I think I saw) she will release information about what set of blocks to make.  Today was the first clue and it’s as easy gets.  4-patch blocks made from neutral fabrics.  The harder part is that the pattern calls for 211 of them.  I’ve completed 90 and I’m on the next 30 now so I’ll be able to get this done in time for next Friday.

I’ve been bundling them as I go along to keep track of how many I’ve made.  Most of these I still ended up buying although I did use some of my stash in here.  A link-up to the site with all the details is at http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2016/11/en-provence-mystery-monday-link-up-part.html

I took a break from that midday (I pretty much did nothing but sew today!) to quilt, quilt and quilt some more.  I finished up the quilting on the half square triangle quilt I’ve been making for my nephew.

I came up with another idea to make it easier on myself, and that is to trim the backing and batting as I rolled the quilt back off after it was done.  That makes it easier to straight up with the ruler.  I had 3 straight pins to take out when I wasn’t watching carefully enough and had a pretty bad pin stick in my finger.  Before I even realized what had happened, there were a couple of big drops of blood on the quilt, and on the cream fabric. Ack!  Hydrogen peroxide did the trick and I don’t think it’s any worse for the wear.

This fabric is pretty thick and between the top, bottom, batting, and 2 layers for the binding I think it was a bit much for either my sewing machine, the Aurifil thread or a combination because my thread kept breaking while I sewed the binding on.  I shorted my stitches then I lengthened them.  I checked the bobbin.  I switched from using the horizontal spooler to the vertical one.  That last one finally made it a little better but I’ve never been so glad to be done sewing the binding on.

I’ve started the process of hand sewing the batting on.  This quilt is only 72″ x 72″ so I don’t think it will take too many days but that remains to be seen.  I think he’s planning to use this as a wall hanging so I guess my next step will be to make a sleeve for it although I’m going to leave the pole and other hardware to him to figure out.