Catching up on the Scrap Dance Minuet Mystery Quilt

I have had some time in the last week to get all caught up on the Scrap Dance Minuet Mystery Quilt.  If you are interested in the pattern or details about the mystery, visit the link above and check out the From My Carolina Home blog.  

I am dancing toward a king size quilt, so I had LOTS of flying geese to make.  I used the method in the pattern for construction of more than 200 geese.  The whites of the ‘wings’ are scrappy, but I worked hard to make sure I had “matching” wings as I was doing the construction.

I used the Studio 180 (Deb Tucker) “Wing Clipper” tool to do all the trimming.  In fact, that Wing Clipper has made the rounds of the members of the Queen Bee’s who are also working on the mystery.  I am handing it off to the “next” QB member today at the Ocean Waves Quilt Guild meeting.  It is a VERY handy tool for trimming the geese.  I don’t think Pam or Nancy L had quite as many to trim as they were pretty quick.  I know Sharon is working on the same size as me and she will be trimming for a few days!  The rotating cutting mat was helpful too when trimming.  I filled a container with the slivers I trimmed off and vacuumed up a lot of those tiny bits yesterday!  Funny how some bits will fly off the cutting table!

After all my trimming of the FG was done, I opened my container to put them in with the 4 patches from March.  I decided to sort the 4 patches by color. That was harder to do because they were SO scrappy.  I keep looking at the two stacks with the “darker” greens/browns and can’t decide about them.  I may take another look later and remove them and in exchange make some more with more “spring like” colors.  Scraps are abundant at my house, so replacing them if they are not pleasing won’t be a problem.  I can always incorporate the “darker” greens/browns into something else.

The next “Step” in the Scrap Dance Minuet Mystery Quilt come out the 2nd Friday in May; so I am caught up and ready to dance again!

I wanted to share with you the completion of the quilt the Queen Bee’s did for the Carolina Hurricane Quilt project –

The quilt blocks were constructed by the members of the Queen Bees and quilted by member Sharon.  Marta made the nice label.  I have had it sitting; binding made for 2  months, waiting for an opportunity to get the binding on. That happened this past week, and it is now “ready to ship”.

The photo below shows the entire quilt “pre binding”.  (Gosh, that was February….red face) Between surgery on my hand, recovery, travel, and the quilt show….it just languished in the sewing room.  Post quilt show, I was able to completely clear my big table which left me space to lay the quilt out, and get the binding pinned on.

My husband laughed when he saw how many times I moved between my sewing machine and the big ironing board and the big table.  I don’t know how others do it, but I like to spread a quilt out and work down a side with my pins/red clips when turning the binding over for stitching. Because I use “Susie’s Magic Binding” method, everything is done on the sewing machine. The only hand work for me was stitching 2 edges of the label.  The other edges of the label are under the edge of the binding.

12″ blocks  – 72×96

If you would like more information on the Carolina Hurricane Quilt project; visit From My Carolina Home

The need is still great and perhaps you can help in one of the many ways suggested at the above link.

That’s it for today! Guild meeting in 2 hours and I have to finish up sandwiches for our Spring Luncheon today!

Are you working on the Scrap Dance Minuet mystery?  What is your favorite way to trim flying geese??