Celtic Solstice is coming along!

We're into the 2nd weekend of January, 2014, already. Christmas was great, celebrating with all three of my kids, two SILs and three grandkids. My daughter hosted, so I didn't have to do a thing but relax and enjoy my family! That's way to celebrate! Unfortunately, all three grandkids had or were just getting over this year's flu/cold/crud and they more than happy to share with the rest of us! So, one daughter and SIL, my son, and I all ended up getting sick. I slept through the week of New Year's. Once I started feeling human again, I moved my sewing machine into the living room in front of my TV, stacked up a bunch of movies I wanted to watch again, and started sewing and singing along with Disney movies, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and many more. And, in less time than I expected, I have made great progress on my Bonnie Hunter Celtic Solstice 2014 mystery quilt! What an adventure this has been, sharing with everyone on the CS Facebook page as we all progressed and are still progressing, each at our own pace.

Bonnie made the big reveal on New Year's Eve at midnight. I was far from being even close to having the clues made since I was down with the bug, but kept downloading the clues to work on when I felt better. This is how it went... Selecting fabrics from my stash, scraps, and FQ drawer in the colors recommended by Bonnie started things off.

When I posted my first real update on my CS, I was still working on the tri-rec's for clue one.They all got made, but as I was assembling the quilt blocks late this week, I undid all of those with the red pinwheel print and replaced them with white to better match the rest of the blocks. Oh how I love going frogging... rip-it, rip-it, rip-it. As you'll see, it was well worth it in the end!

Then I started in on the lovely and challenging chevrons. I spent a weekend working a booth at a local flea market and took my supplies with me and got most of the parts cut out, staying busy when it wasn't busy.

Getting them sewn together properly was not as much of a challenge as I had thought it might be, but maybe it's because I've done this type of piecing before.

As I cut the small triangles off of the chevrons, I started string piecing them together, sewing along one short side. Eventually they will be little pinwheels themselves to be used in another project.

It was fun watching as I string-pieced the various parts to see them fall into a perfect spiral "flower" on the floor behind my machine.

Then it was on to the pinwheels. I used triangle paper to make them, stitching on the lines and then cutting them apart into perfect HSTs. I left the paper on until after I'd pressed them so they wouldn't distort on the bias edges. My only mistake on these was that I chose a triangle paper larger than I needed, so ended up with 2.5" HSTs that made larger pinwheels than I needed, so each one had to be trimmed down to 3.5" finished after they were sewn together.

Once the pinwheels were made (notice they're larger, pic taken pre-trimming), I put some of each clue up on my design board to get a look at how the parts were progressing. I must admit it was fun seeing each piece come together and wonder about what the finished blocks would look like!

I continued on to the four-patches (which I didn't photograph) and then the split triangle blocks. This time I used the correct size triangle paper printed from Triangulations so there wasn't any extra trimming to do, thank goodness! I used lots of Best Press on the fabrics before cutting out to help keep them from distorting as I sewed all those bias edges together.

With all of the clues made, it was time to start playing with the layout to see what my scrappy color combinations would look like in the finished quilt. Now it was getting very exciting!

As you can see, I chose to turn my chevrons around and make my Birthday Girl blocks into stars. Also, several of the 54-40 blocks with the tri-recs don't have 4-patches in them. This is because I had used both white and creamy/tan neutrals and wanted the whites together in the center with the creamy neutrals on the outside. So, I laid out the tri-recs alone to get their color placement correct first and then started sewing those blocks together with the scrappy 4-patches. It's definitely coming together and has taken over half of my kitchen! I'm leaving it on the floor until it's all assembled so I can keep the blocks and rows straight until I get them all sewn together. Then it will be on to borders. I've loved several of the border variations I've seen and may borrow ideas from a couple of people's quilts to finish off mine. We'll see...

I'm linking up with the Mystery Monday Link-up Part 6 on Bonnie's blog where others are sharing their Celtic Solstice progress.

This has been such a fun project! I'm definitely going to do more scrappy quilts and am already looking forward to Bonnie's 2015 mystery quilt. The bag full of fabrics I pulled for this project is still mostly full, so there's plenty more to do this again or do some other scrappy top in these colors. And then there's the tubs and totes and bags of fabrics hiding in my sewing room and under various beds and in closets. LOL!

As soon as all the pieces and borders are assembled, I'll be posting more pix, but for today, this is a full update of how my Celtic Solstice has come together. I'm seriously considering calling it Solstice Moonrise since there are several fabrics with stars and moons, plus several scraps from the Goodnight Moon quilt I made for my grandson. I'm also partial to the winter solstice since that's my birthday.

More snippets from the sewing room soon,
Liz