Brown Bag Mystery Quilt 2021- Double the Fun

 In 2021 I joined Karen Montgomery's Brown Bag Mystery quilt along. Karen will design an exclusive pattern and get with shops that participated in Sewposium in February to sell the bags. In the bags, your fabric is chosen but usually, they give you a hint at one of the fabrics. I joined through The Fiberology Lab. Then during Spring, the clues are sent out once a week. I am a bit of a procrastinator and did manage to finish piecing mine in Sept of 2021, but realized I never shared. My bag was black and white with a pop of color. I am very happy with my results. I do have borders to put on and quilting to do. It has joined the pile of quilts I need to quilt.

Tea Time!

This one is from a subscription service I had enrolled in for a short period of time called Plum Deluxe. I got these lovely teas from my monthly box in May. The French Tart Black Tea was very good. It was made for the box and seasonal, so you won't find it on the site but they have other wonderful teas to choose from.

Finished Project photoshoot

 

Fish Bowl Quilt

I went out to the park recently to take a photoshoot of my finished Project Linus quilt. I'm naming the quilt "Fish Bowls" since almost all the blocks contained fish. Tula's book originally names the pattern "Trellis" but I'm going with a water theme here. 

I know I mentioned this before but it is from Tula Pink's City Sampler 100 Modern Blocks. If you are interested in the book I found mine on Amazon. There have been a few quilt-alongs that use this book for a pattern. Gnome Angel's 100 Blocks 100 Days challenge and Mountain Creek's National Park Sew Alongare a couple I know of off the top of my head.

I was trying to get a good photo of the complete photo of the front but most of them were not coming out how I liked. I did get an interesting photo of the back. I had a bit of a picnic with me because I stopped for drinks and snacks on my way to the park. 

I think the bench photos are my favorite but they do cover up part of the blocks. A lot of times quilts need to be seen up close for a good idea of the quilting involved, but I didn't get a real close picture of it.

The sky was very overcast this day because it was right before the remnants of Ida hit us. I got home an hour later and it started pouring rain within minutes of me getting inside.

Tea Time!

My tea for the day was a Matcha Iced Latte from Starbucks. It had been a while since I had one and I thought it would be a great treat.

Row by Row Experience 2019

So this year's row by row theme was Taste the Experience. I wasn't certain about this year because I didn't end up making last year's. I did get into traveling for the rows this year and found time to go to some new shops because of it. I had a few of the rows put together before I started my hustle for Dragoncon but I didn't start the bulk of working on Row by Row until I got home. Even then it took two weeks for me to get my attention back to sewing. I had a touch of the con crud the first week and then spent another week obsessing over if anyone got the tags I hid.

When it was all said and done I made 8-row patterns and found a new way to connect them all. The shapes lend themselves to a different looking quilt then what I've done in the previous years. I think I like this one a lot. I finished it on Sept. 29th but wrote the 30th on the label because I worked myself to death and forgot what day it was. I was tired of looking at the thing.

Not as many shops were participating in my area so quite a few are from out of town. I had gone through Georgia for half the rows. I was able to turn the quilt into my local shop. The shop owner has seen all my previous row by row quilts and said she thinks this one is my best yet. I feel the work put into this one.

Small errors that caused a few headaches

I do have to say, every time I've participated in the challenge, I do learn something new. This time it was the pineapple row that taught me something new. I have been told next year is going to be completely different so I'm excited to see what happens next.

Challenge/ Charity quilt

Mom's top

March's guild meeting for the Tellico Quilters Guild mom picked up stuff for their challenge quilt/charity quilt. The main challenge was to use these kids sports fabric and create a quilt out of it. They did give some fabrics that you can use but mom didn't like most of them. She did a cute block pattern alternating in pink and green.

She asked me to do the backing because she likes my backing style. I was asked not last week but the week before that and I told her it would have to wait until the baby quilt was done. Since that was finished yesterday, this was today's project. It surprised me she wanted me to do the backing. She doesn't normally do improve and most of my pieced backs are improve pieced sometimes echoing an element on the front.

back in progress

Fabric selection

Sometimes I spend a lot of time thinking and changing but a lot of the time I just go with what feels right. I do still find times where a color combination will give me trouble. I did have that issue with this one. I was given all the scraps and the extra fabrics that she got from the swap. Some of the fabrics I wished to incorporate but I just couldn't figure out how to add them. It did take longer then I thought it would because I did some small piecing to use up specific scraps.

I am happy with the overall backing.  I created the squares from the front and made the pieced section of the fabrics from the front. I did want to use dark blue or orange but I couldn't make them work and they just didn't match.

Finished backing