Half Square Triangle Quilts Are One Of My Favorite Things

Remember those little half square triangles from a couple of weeks ago. Well, this is where I am with them at this point. I’m not exactly sure where this will wind up or how big it will be, but I think I at least have an idea. I’m loving the spectrum idea, I’m just not sure I have enough variety of fabrics to really pull it off.

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It seems to have been good timing as the president of my quilt guild just issued a new challenge. A quilt with all half square triangles and nothing else. It will be interesting to see what others come up with as well. There are so many things you can do with them, it’s really limitless in its possibilities.

I’d love to see any HST quilts that you have made as well. Comment below and link to your pictures or post if you would be willing to share.

Random Scraps

As a quilter, do you ever just get the hankering to just mindlessly piece scraps together and see where you wind up? I occasionally do, and so it was earlier this week. I saw something really pretty made from just light/dark half square triangles and solid squares and I got inspired to start sewing together a bunch of scraps.

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I have this box of half square triangle pieces that were cut with my Accuquilt at some point in the past. I just sort of randomly cut pieces every now and then and throw them in here. It serves me well for when the mood hits me.

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Not exactly sure where these little babies will take me, but I’m along for the ride. Quilting is sometimes that way, isn’t it?

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It’s got me thinking. What is it about chain piecing that is so relaxing? Is it that you don’t have to think too hard about it? Is it a making order from chaos thing? Is it the fun of pairing two fabrics together that you might not normally pair and finding happy little surprises along the way? Is it that you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, but it doesn’t feel like work? What are your thoughts on it? I’d love to know. Until I hear from you, I’ll just blissfully keep piecing away.

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This year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

As I have done the past few years, I began working on Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery quilt back in November. If you are unfamiliar with this, let me fill you in. Every year, Bonnie Hunter, who is an amazing quilt designer and teacher offers a mystery quilt pattern that releases on Black Friday and usually goes into January. What is a mystery quilt? A mystery quilt is made little by little as “clues” are released once a week. You have a week to complete each step and once all the pieces are made, then the big reveal at the end shows you how it all goes together. The mystery is that you won’t know what the full quilt pattern will be until the very end. That’s the fun of it. Bonnie does this out of the goodness of her heart and makes the pattern available for free during the time when the clues are being released. It’s a way for those who maybe struggle with the Holiday season to have something fun to look forward to and keep them occupied during what might be a lonely or difficult time for them. Thousands of quilters from all around the world join in every year and it is really fun to see the excitement and the posts of each clue on Bonnie’s Facebook page.

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This year’s mystery was called “Grassy Creek”. I went completely rogue with the colors this year. She mentioned in the directions which of the colors from her palette would be the most dominant color. I knew I wanted a different color to be my dominant color, so I chose what I wanted and went from there. I turned Bonnie’s palette to a black and white photo and then chose my colors based on the amount of yardage that was listed and the tonal value that that particular color had. In the end, it allowed me to use much more of what I already had in my stash and colors that spoke more to me and who I am as a quilter. I just love bright clear colors. I’m so thrilled with how my top turned out. I made a smaller number of units than Bonnie’s original plan. I just did not need, nor did I want to make, a quilt that large. Mine is plenty big enough for my needs.

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I’m pretty sure Aeris loves it, too.

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So I Promised Some Updates

So I thought I’d approach this a couple of months at a time seeing as I have a lot of ground to cover and I don’t want these to be super long posts. LOL.

I think I left off with my Good Fortune quilt top back in January. That is done, but I don’t have it quilted yet. I want to have it done by a long arm quilter and that is pretty expensive, so I have not yet bitten the bullet and had it done.

In February, my mother-in-law, Burdette, organized an outing for all of us girls on the Lehn side of the family to go and paint bowls for a charity event called “Empty Bowls”. It’s a dinner that people pay to have a bowl of soup and they keep the bowl as a reminder that other’s bowls are empty. The proceeds all go to a local homeless shelter. We had a lot of fun. I painted mine with blue and yellow and put on it a quote from Maya Angelou that says “Let nothing dim the light that shines within.” Writing on the bowls with the little squeeze bottles of paint is a bit tricky, but I managed to make it work.


At the end of February, I met my sister, Janet, and her daughter, Kayla, down in Clearwater, Florida for a little vacation. My sister both sells Dixie Belle Paint and refinishes furniture with the Dixie Belle Paint. She had a conference in Tampa. We met up after her conference was over to spend a few days of beach time and girl time together. I got my first tattoo on that trip. I had been considering one anyway and we had a rainy day, so my niece talked us into it. I got a sand dollar on my ankle, my sister got an otter on the top of her foot and my niece got a narwhal on her arm. They were done by Emily Elegado from Foolish Pride 2 Tattoo in Clearwater.

We had a nice time catching up with each other. It had been a long time since the three of us were together.

In March I finished up a quilt that I had been working on for my niece, Lexi. Her 18th birthday was in April so I gifted it to her for her special day. A long time ago when Lexi was probably preschool age, I got the idea to save scraps from all the things that I made for her and “someday” use them in a quilt. Well, “someday” finally arrived and i finished out the quilt for her birthday this year. There is a little bit of everything in this quilt and I hope that it sparks fun memories for her. I used purple on the back as that was one of her high school’s colors. Lexi loves to play basketball and was part of her varsity team this year that went to the state finals.

That’s the highlights for those two months and that’s probably enough for now. I’ll be back later with more.

A Little Catching Up

Its been a little while since I blogged about anything, so I thought I should probably catch you all up a little bit.

I’ve been working on the Good Fortune mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter for the last several weeks, pretty much exclusively. I went through many different border ideas because I wasn’t crazy about how my color choices played out in the border that was originally designed. It was all just a little too “Go Vikings!” for my taste. No matter what, every time I looked at that overwhelming purple and gold it just screamed football to me and that is just not what I was going for.

So then I tried this.

That seemed a bit much, so then I thought about this.

But that seemed too washed out. So I settled on this for that round of the border.

Then came the final outer border. I just pieced together a bunch of neutrals. My plan was to have neutral squares for the corners, but of course, once I looked at that, it seemed a bit blah. So… on to trying to figure out what to do with the corners.

These are just some of the options I considered, but ultimately, this is where I landed with it.

This is what the corner blocks look like all layed out together. I think this might make a really interesting block to do sometime as a quilt unto itself.

So the Good Fortune Top is officially finished. Measuring in at about 82 inches square, this is the biggest quilt I have ever made. I will be looking for someone to long arm this for me as this is way too big for me to tackle on my own. I don’t even have a place big enough in my house to lay it out on the floor to sandwich it, LOL. I’m excited that it will be big enough to use on my queen size bed, though. Even if the colors don’t match the room at all.

So there you have it, that’s the majority of what I’ve been working on for the last several weeks. I have one other smaller finish that I will share soon as well, but this is enough for today.

I've Been Through the Desert on a Quilt With No Name

“It felt good to be out of the rain…” Oh sorry… Anyway.

i’ve been working on this fun little number lately. I had several half square triangle (HST) units and four patch units left over from previous projects, so one night I just started throwing them up on my design wall and this is what emerged. I started sewing the smaller HST’s into four patch units yesterday and I realized this morning that I have a few of the four patches turned the wrong direction, so I will have to fix that. I’m trying to decide on a name for it, but I’m coming up blank. I thought about calling it “Throwing Up Leftovers”, but, you know, that didn’t seem like the best name for a quilt, LOL. Anyone have any ideas? Because, clearly I’m out of them, LOL.

Good Fortune - Quiltville's Mystery for this year

My last post talked about last year’s mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter. I’m also participating this year and as of right now we are four clues in. I changed up the color palette a little from Bonnie’s original color scheme. Her original colors were red, jade green, blue and orange along with neutrals in whites and creams. I changed the jade green to lime green, the blue to purple and the orange to yellow. Hoping it all goes together ok. I wanted mine to be just a little different than the thousands of others that will be out there at the end of the mystery. Here is a rundown of all of the clues so far. I can’t give sizes or piece counts, but I can show you pictures of what I have made.

Clue 1

Clue 2

Clue 3

Clue 4