I know… I know…it’s technically a Mystery Tuesday post but in my defense I’ve been really sick this last week and I still managed to get TONS done for the 3rd Season of Project QUILTING and organize the Home Sweet Home Quilt Along!

Enough excuses…on with the quilt!

• Choosing Your Fabrics
• Steps 1 & 2
• Steps 3 & 4
• Steps 5, 6, 7 & 8
• Step 9
• Steps 10, 11, 12, & 13
• Steps 14 & 15
• Steps 16 & 17

Here’s my quilt laid out on the floor at the retreat.  Man – was that a great feeling to see it there!
Mine is not quite there yet…I promise I will share with you once I get to that point!
Thanks for following along!  I would love to see your quilt if you decided to make one too!

If you’re just tuning in to the Mystery Monday from the Quilts by Barb 2011 Quilt Retreat be sure to take a look a back at

• Choosing Your Fabrics
• Steps 1 & 2
• Steps 3 & 4
• Steps 5, 6, 7 & 8
• Step 9
• Steps 10, 11, 12, & 13

Step 14.  Sew a C rectangle from Step 9 to two sides of a 4 patch from Step 4, making sure fabric B is in the corner.  Make 6.

Step 15.  Using corner 4 patches from Step 4, make:

See you in a week!  We’re almost there….

A mystery created by Diane Lapacek for the 2011 Quilts by Barb Quilt Retreat Getaway Weekend held in Belmont, WI.

Just days before I planned on heading out to the Quilt Retreat I decided that I would do the Mystery Quilt. Diane was over and she helped me pick out my fabrics!. Lucky for you – you now get to follow along in the fun!

Step 1: Fabric Selection

Fabric A and B: This mystery is designed as a scrap quilt. Choose 2 different colors for A and B. Complimentary colors will created lots of zing.

I chose some muted to lime green for my Fabric A.

• CUTTING for A: 44 strips: 2 1/2” x 10 1/2”

This piece of Bryant Park Orange Faded Floral from Anthology fabric from FabricFascination was actually my inspiration to even do this quilt. I’m sure you all know that I just finished up with a crazy busy apple season and I really need to get inventory created for my two big sales coming up (the 5th Annual Handcrafted Hoedown for the Holidays and the 7th Annual Holiday Craftacular). I had just planned on going to the retreat for a weekend away but once I even thought about doing the mystery project, I glanced through my stash and saw this piece. It was just ‘calling’ to me to be made into a quilt.

• CUTTING FABRIC B: 28 strips – 2 1/2” x 10 1/2”, 43 squares – 4 1/2” x 4 1/2”, 8 squares – 6” x 6”, 2 squares – 4” x 4”

Fabric C. Should be more neutral in tone and medium light in value. Don’t get too wild here. Pick one fabric (1 3/4 yards) or several that are closely related in tone and value and not too busy.

I chose some hand-dyed fabric for my fabric C. The main portion of the fabric is actually my piece of from Barbs ‘Yard that Keeps on Giving’. For the life of me I could NOT find the piece she had given me. Of course, I had put somewhere special so I wouldn’t get it confused with my other hand-dyes..and of course, I couldn’t find it. So, as I was packing for the retreat and searching for a pattern (that I still can’t find) I FOUND MY YARD THAT KEEPS ON GIVING! Woo Hoo! There’s no way I would get it made into something before Saturday night’s show and tell but it happened to be perfect for my Mystery Quilt!

• CUTTING Fabric C: 14 strips: 4 1/2” x 42” (or shorter strips to equal this)

Fabric D. Lights. Mix lots of different ones. Variety is a big plus here.

My Fabric D are some yellow/oranges. I think it will be a fun addition!

• CUTTING Fabric D: 16 strips: 2 1/2” x 10 1/2”, 20 squares: 4 1/2” x 4 1/2”

Fabric E. Darks. A darker version of either A or B or pick another color. Use lots of fabrics or just one (1/2 yard)

I chose a fun orange/brown/gold fabric for this.

• CUTTING Fabric E: 6 Strips: 1 1/2” x 42” (Or shorter strips to equal this)

Step 1 is complete! All my fabrics are cut and ready to be made into a beautiful MYSTERY Quilt.

After browsing through last weeks post I realized that I actually have accomplished quite a bit in the last seven days. Get ready for it…

Boxed In Quilt

My goal with this quilt for the week was to get the borders on so I could get them to Barb for quilting. I thought I’d have until this Saturday but Barb ended being in town visiting her daughter so I managed to get the borders on two of my quilts last Thursday and delivered them on Friday for her to take home. If she got to them this week I should be able to see them tomorrow (fingers are crossed…). Here’s the first set of borders I added. I really wanted to be elongated so it would be the perfect lap size so I added a few extra strips onto the ends. I used the same pink tiny floral patterned fabric that I had used in the interior sashing for my exterior borders. The plan in my mind, as of right now, is to bind the quilt with the brown fabric from the first sashing to sort of ‘close’ the quilt.

the Mystery Quilt:

The other quilt I managed to get bordered is this Mystery Quilt. Again, I wanted to elongate it so I added a special detail from some of my square patches I had extra’s off from piecing the middle. I also managed to snag a great piece of leafy grey fabric from Diane’s stash for the borders. I really love how this changed the entire look of the quilt. The piecing really pops now and the teals/turquoises I used pull out the ‘blue’ in the grey fabric I bordered with. It really is gorgeous – can’t wait to see what Barb decides to do with the quilting!

Block-A-Palooza Quilt

I haven’t progressed passed finishing all 16 blocks on this one. A ‘sneak peak’ at the quilt top has been posted but I’m waiting for further instructions on that. I have a feeling I’ll be adding my own twist to the final quilt but I do really want to follow what the quilt-a-long as closely as possible since that’s a challenge for me in itself.

the Bloom Quilt:

I had my two lovely girls layout the yoyo’s on the quilt for me this morning (and they picked them up too). So, I thought it was only fair to put them in the picture with all their hard work.

Below is a breakdown from the spreadsheet I created on my ‘bloom’ process (yes…I’m a dork)…

Size of yo-yo's	Quanity Made	Goal	% Complete
1 (largest)	13	18	72%
2	8	54	15%
3	32	48	67%
4	45	48	94%
5	36	64	56%
6 (smallest)	36	40	90%
TOTAL	170	272	63%

The Matryoshka Project

This little matryoshka doll ornament project is going faster than I thought it would. All the machine stitching is done. They are stuffed with batting. AND I have about 35ish hand stitched shut – way over half done and even a day+ past my 11/day goal for these. If things continue this way I could be done before the end of the week!

The Secret Project

DONE and will be heading to Barb for quilting on Saturday.

Project QUILTING – Large Scale Print

Here are the main fabrics for my ‘Large Scale’ print piece. I think I’m going to wait a little bit before I post more – but I’ll give you a hint – LOVE Ricky Tim’s Convergence Technique!

Project M

I also really wanted to get my consignment shops stocked up before this baby decides to join us so I sent a nice size box full or earrings, rings, and bracelets off to the Project M Boutique in Riverwest, Milwaukee.

Goals from last week:Project M Boutique

• getting the borders on the three quilts (mystery, boxed in, and surprise quilt) COMPLETED
• finish machine work on the matryoshka ornaments COMPLETED
• make a patchwork kite (or two) for theGlitterWorkshop
• stay on track with my yoyo goal COMPLETED
• get a good start on the final Project QUILTING challenge right away
• start work on two owls I have custom ordered
• finish packing my bag for the hospital COMPLETED

Goals for this week:

• make a patchwork kite (or two) for theGlitterWorkshop
• make some spring jewelry for theGlitterWorkshop
• stay on track with my yoyo goal
• finish up my Project QUILTING Challenge piece
• start work on two custom ordered owls
• finish up matryoshka ornaments
• make a quilt for baby #3

A look back:

• WIP Wednesday – Round 1
• WIP Wednesday – Round 2
• WIP Wednesday – Round 3
• WIP Wednesday – Round 4

As usual I don’t have much as I would have liked to show you today. I took a bit of time for myself and some pampering when the girls were being watched (pedicure and new haircut…) – but now that that is all done maybe I’ll accomplish LOTS in the next week!? lol…we’ll just have to see what happens…

Boxed In and the Mystery Quilt:

I have decided to combine these today since very little progress has been made…

As I’m sure you’ve notice – the borders are still not on the quilts. I don’t have enough room on my basement floors to properly lay the quilt out and measure so I can put the borders on correctly. So, it’s going to involve a lot of up and down my stairs…I’m still mentally preparing for this. Hoping to get it done tomorrow….

One thing I did finally do was measuring so I can at least get the first set of strips ready for pinning. It’s a start at least!

Block-A-Palooza Quilt

Blocks 1-15 are complete! Block 16, aka the last block, will be posted tomorrow and then next week we find out how they want us to do the layout. I had such a fun time with this quilt along – I hope to start with the Patchwork Squared Modern Solid’s Quilt Along starting on March 28th – but we’ll see what baby thinks about that…

the Bloom Quilt:

Before I talk too much about this I have to apologize for all the terrible pictures. I layout my progress on Tuesday nights after the girls go to bed – I fear if I didn’t wait until they weren’t around my yoyo’s would be scattered all about the house… As I start actually attaching them to the quilt (and the weather gets nicer) I’ll hopefully have some better quality pictures to show you.

I actually managed to make some progress with this quilt. I did the machine stitching of the binding so now I just have to sit down, relax and hand stitch it to the back of the quilt. I’ve been working really hard to get a lot of hand work ready just in case I have to go on any bed rest of any sort. I’m feeling great and all my levels (ie blood pressure, etc) have been just fine…I just like to be prepared.

Because I’m a super dork - I have now started a spread sheet to keep track of my progress on the yoyo’s. There are six sizes of yoyo’s which I have ‘1’ being the largest and ‘6’ being the smallest. As of yesterday I have:

• size 1 - 13
• size 2 - 6
• size 3– 28
• size 4 - 32
• size 5 - 20
• size 6 - 29

TOTAL: 128

From the looks of the quilt layout I’m going to need at least double that to really fill it in…still a bit of work to do but it doesn’t feel too bad when you only make it a goal to do 5 yoyo’s a day.

The Matryoshka Project

A few weeks back I was contacted on etsy about possibly making 55 Matryoshka Doll ornaments for someone to use as wedding favors. After checking my fabric to make sure this was a possibility I said yes. Last week, I started to work on them (I have until the middle of June but I’d really like to get these done before baby arrives – just one less thing to worry about). The first step was to cut out all the dolls from the fabric – I used my ‘mini’ rotary cutter for this.Next, cut out the backing from some hand-dyed fabric. The customer didn’t want much variation on the back so I had to fussy cut around some of the more ‘textured’ portions of the piece I chose. It ended up working out just fine.The next step – machine sewing along the outline of the doll, adding in the ribbon as I go. I have 20 done like this so far…just 35 to go. Then, to just snip on the curves, flip, stuff and hand stitch…not too bad right?

The Secret Project

I made a lot of progress on this one this week as well. I just have to add the borders and send it off to Barb for quilting!

Project QUILTING – Flying Geese

Here’s a picture of the Project QUILTING Challenge Piece – 3 Geese. I’ll be blogging more about this once I hear the judges critique. In the meantime, visit the voting post and be sure to caste your vote for your favorite project this week!

Goals for this week:

• getting the borders on the three quilts (mystery, boxed in, and surprise quilt)
• finish machine work on the matryoshka ornaments
• make a patchwork kite (or two) for theGlitterWorkshop
• stay on track with my yoyo goal
• get a good start on the final Project QUILTING challenge right away
• start work on two owls I have custom ordered
• finish packing my bag for the hospital

A look back:

• WIP Wednesday – Round 1
• WIP Wednesday – Round 2
• WIP Wednesday – Round 3

Our third steady judge for Project QUILTING is going to be someone I’ve talked about a lot – Barb Raisbeck of QuiltsbyBarb. Barb is Diane’s sister, my aunt-in-law and an extremely talented long arm quilter. (oh and trust me – neither Diane or Barb will be ‘easy on me’ for scoring – if anything they are even more critical of my work!)

Flower Power Quilt

She has participated in a few of the challenges but any challenges she feels like working on will just be for ‘show’ and not eligible for any of the prizes.

Checkers Anyone?

Here’s Barb’s ‘About Me’ that I snagged from her website:

Let me tell you how I got started quilting.

Around 1990, Mom made a quilt top for my son, Cory. I was very excited when I went to WalMart and picked out a black,purple, green and gold print fabric. Then I went and selected all these plain colored polyester fabric for poor Mom to make the quilt. She didn't complain; thank goodness I selected the Rail Fence pattern, and she made Cory's quilt top.

Now it was time for me to hand quilt it. Mom was going to come to my home in Bloomington, Wisconsin, to get me started and teach me how to hand quilt. Before we got to do this, Mom suffered a massive heart attack and we lost our wonderful Mother just ten days later.

Bargello Trip Around the World

The quilt top sat in the closet until I saw a quilt that had been machine quilted. I thought, now that is what I can do with Cory's quilt and it will get finished. I sent the quilt top out and had it quilted with a polyester batting with the cloud pattern. I brought it home and put about a 4 inch wide binding on the edge, all done by machine. I think Cory still has the quilt.

My daughter, Katrina, then thought she needed a quilt. I was already a lot wiser. Katrina and I went to a local quilt shop and selected four blue fabrics of 100% cotton. I made my first quilt top, a Sunshine and Shadows quilt, all in blues. I sent it off to the machine quilter and it was quilted with a pantograph pattern. I was hooked on quilting!!

Purple Heat Resistant Mini Quilt

I continued making quilt tops and sending them out to a local machine quilter. She specialized in pantographs only and I was ready for more. It was time for me to purchase my own long arm quilting machine. My husband was very skeptical as I threatened to put the machine in our living room unless we built on to our house. I threatened for about a year and eventually we built a wonderful two story addition to our home for my new quilting studio.

Fast forward a few years to 2001 and I decided this quilting stuff was alright. I quit my full time job working for the US government and Quilts by Barb became my full time passion. It has been nothing but uphill every since!

Quilts by Barb has evolved to include Quilt Retreat Getaway Weekends and Hand Dyeing Workshops. We celebrated our fifth year anniversary of fall retreats in 2007. I have taught over 300 students in Beginning Quilting 101 and a large number of other quilt classes at local quilt shops in the area and in my studio. In 2007, I had my first opportunity to teach at the Wisconsin Quilt Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, and will be back again in 2010.

Where’s the Point – Quilt PATTERN

Around Christmas time in 2006, I decided it was time to trade up from my Gammill Classic with an IntelliStitch attachment to a Gammill Optimum with a Statler Stitcher. The Statler Stitcher is a top of the line quilting system and it helps me to continue to provide the best in custom machine quilting for my quilting customers.

There are many days when I am working on a quilt for myself or a custom quilt for a customer and I think just how much my Mother would have enjoyed helping me in my quilting business. Unfortunately, I didn't get started quilting until after I lost her but I am guessing she is watching me from above and is really glad I know better than to head to WalMart for polyester fabric as I continue to add to my quilting stash!

Check out this post to see the THREE Quilts that Barb had in the International Quilt Festival in Chicago this past April!

Barb is also the host and teacher of the Quilts By Barb Quilt Retreats each fall. 2011 looks to be just as amazing as all the past one – if not more so! Check out http://www.quiltsbybarb.com/2011quiltretreat.htm for more information on what’s going on.

I know that I’m really excited to have three permanent judges along witha fourth guest judge when possible. I love getting feedback on my work – it can only make me a stronger quilter. Thank you to my judges for helping make Project Quilting just that much more special.

This past Saturday was my annual Apple Bash. This year it was extra special because we combined it with my father-in-law, Frank’s 60th Birthday Party. The bash is my husband’s and I’s last hurrah before Apple Season begins and we don’t have time to see our friends anymore. We love to see our friend’s and family and it’s a good time that lasts the whole night.

This year, one of my friends from my online etsy Quiltsy Team was in the area and I invited her to stop by – and she did!

I was happy to meet Cindy of CinfulArt (on the right). My aunt-in-law, Barb, also a Quiltsy team member was our our party as well (left). (I’m in the middle!). Cindy and her husband (who’s name is escaping me right now) were a great addition to our bash. My FIL even brought up that it was nice to meet them and they seemed to fit right in (and there were at least 100 people there throughout the evening).

I imagine it was a bit intimidating to drive up to someone’s place that you’ve never met and see all those cars lined up! I’m so glad you braved it out Cindy…it was great meeting you and showing off my workspace, house and orchard. :)

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about my "Squarey Quilt" (actual pattern name is 'Window Panes' but I've always called it my squarey quilt). I RARELY keep things for myself. Initially I was going to make this quilt for my brother (sorry Brian) but I just fell in love with it and had to keep it. Unfortunately for my brother, he has yet to get a quilt. (Waiting for him to get married or turn 35...)

The pattern called for black background fabric...since I can never follow a pattern or recipe (never ask me to make bread) EXACTLY...the first thing I altered was that I was going to use dark blue as my background. Once again, I headed over to Diane's basement and I dyed my fabric. I dyed the dark blue and some other various colored fabric.

When choosing the other fabric, I chose from some fabric that I had dyed, some that Diane had dyed and some commercial fabric. I love mixing hand-dyes with commercial. I just think it gives a quilt an amazing look.

Once my fabric was dyed and wash out. I started to cut my fabric for the quilt and piece my squares together. We have a King Size bed so the end result for this quilt was going to be quite large.

Have I ever mentioned before just how much I LOVE color. I love all colors and I especially love putting them next to each other and combine them with colors one would typically not think of to combine. Two of my favorite color combinations in this quilt are the toned down lime green with the navy blue and the lovely orange with the blue. I just think they look absolutely fabulous next to each other!

When I was done with the top of this quilt I sent it off to my aunt-in-law, Barb to quilt. She did a fabulous random pattern with a swirl in the center of each square. It is absolutely perfect for this quilt. To save myself a head-ache I also just had her use one of her large pieces of fabric for the back of the quilt. I just sent her the top and she took care of the rest!

When the quilt was returned to me I bound it with a variegated binding that I made from the left over pieces of the squares. It tied the inside and outside together quite well.

I am still in love with this quilt and am so glad I never parted with it!

I have shown you Karma's True Lover's Knot quilt already. Today I'm going to show off the quilt that she made for her second niece, Capri. I call it the Flip Flop Quilt because the fabric in the 'ball' area is an adorably fun flip flop design.

Karma used Barb's You'll Have a Ball pattern when making this quilt.