Orca Bay Part 4

I finished all 128 string triangles a couple weeks ago. They took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I really liked making them. In fact, I like the idea of string piecing part of a quilt block so much that I'll be using this technique again.

I've jumped ahead to Part 6 and started making cute little Ohio Star blocks. 56 of those to do, and I'm loving them!

Orca Bay Part 3

I don't know how anyone can be bored in this life because I always have a million things to do, and I just don't have time to be bored.

The last week and a half has been busy, as always. We drove up north a week ago Saturday to do some shopping and visit with my son, and we've spent the rest of the time trying to finish up some renovation work in the basement.

All 350 half square triangle units required for Part 3 of the Orca Bay mystery are done. They took so much longer than I thought. The actual sewing was fast enough, but it took hours to cut up several hundred squares to make them. There are another 224 squares required for an upcoming part, so I just cut all of them at the same time, which will save me time later. My favorite method of making half square triangle units is to make it big and whack it off, so all that trimming after the units are sewn takes time too.

Next up are the red string triangle units for the flying geese. I've made probably 20 of these so far. The rest will take some time as I'm sewing 8-10 strings on each square foundation, and I need 64 of them.

Bonnie Hunter wasn't kidding when she said she liked "intense piecing".

Orca Bay Part 2

All my blue string blocks are done-- finished the last of them late this evening. They were fun, and I'll make these little string pieced blocks again in another project.

Part 3 calls for 350 half square triangle units. I already have 120 sewn, and the rest will go quickly. I probably won't get back to them until Sunday though, because we are headed north tomorrow to visit my son.

It snowed most of the day today, light snow with about an inch of accumulation. The weather has been strange this winter. We had a warmup at the end of December, then it got bitter cold for several days. But we have NO snow on the ground other than the inch we got today, which might not bode well for plants that need a blanket of snow to protect them from the deep cold. Hope the weather is decent tomorrow.

Orca Bay Mystery

Bonnie Hunter started posting the parts for her annual mystery quilt, Orca Bay, in November. There were 8 parts altogether, posted over a period of about 7 weeks. All of the parts have now been posted, and the full quilt has been revealed.

I started working on mine shortly after Part 1 was posted in November and finished probably 50 of 224 double hourglass units before Part 2 was posted. It was all sort of downhill from there. I did as Bonnie suggested, doing a few units from each part if you couldn't keep up. A good idea, and I was going right along up to about Part 5, and then things got too busy because of the holidays.

After New Year's I went back and started again with Part 1, and tonight I finished all 224 double hourglass units. Yay! I feel like all I've done for weeks is make double hourglasses. Doesn't really look like 224 little blocks, does it?

For Part 2, I need 72 cute little blue string blocks. I managed to get 40 of those sewn up last month, so only 32 to go. Tomorrow is a sew day at Koleen's, so I'll get the rest done tomorrow.