On Ringo Lake - I started!

Hello! I'm finally hard at work on 2017's Mystery Quilt "On Ringo Lake" designed by Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville. If you want to stitch along it is free for now and lots of fun. We link up on Mondays to share our progress. Go visit HERE to see the fun!

My sweet pile of unpressed 9 patches

Bonnie has already released Part 3, however I am just finishing up Part 1. Same reasons as always - I had other stitching items to finish first. This year I had a few formals that needed repair and altering. The last was delivered a few days ago and now I can stitch what I want! Yeah! Party for me!

Bright blue. Vivid red. Black. Silver to gray neutrals.

I went out on my own for colors this year. Bonnie's are lovely but I want something for my room. So blue is happening here as well as vivid red, black and silver to gray neutrals. Pretty simple. Then the really tragic aspect is that this quilt will finish smaller than I need for my king size bed so I will have to add borders, or make more rows and columns to get the size I seek. I'm not sure why I can't simply follow a pattern without going rogue. My bad :)

Part 1 was stitching 9 patches. Thankfully I got them stitched and half are pressed. I plan on starting part 2 tomorrow. Unless life happens. We are eagerly waiting on grandbaby #3 to arrive. He should be here before Christmas. It will be a fabulous delay to welcome a new sweet soul into the family. 

Pressed 9 patches

I noticed something today as I pressed 9 patches. Look at the stack. It's fairly neat. 

9 patches

See how uniform the 9 patch units appear. Bonnie helped me learn this. I was simply pressing and stacking them. They are already properly sized. As I work on Bonnie's mystery quilts she instructs us on cutting, stitching and pressing. I spent the fall working on a partial quilt top from years ago. It is full of tucks and bobbles. I'm going to finish it rather than discard the lovely fabrics. It will be a testament to how far I have come in my quilting education. Especially now that I can see I have improved and will hopefully continue to get even better. 

Thank you Bonnie!! You have taught me so much. I can now cut, stitch and press with amazing (to me) results. I can take scraps of fabric and create a useful item that is also beautiful. I appreciate your devotion to teaching us all aspects of quilting!