New Beginnings

Here are my new quilt beginnings:

I just finished cutting out DD#3's wedding quilt. Here are the pieces for their Celtic Knot quilt. It an easy quilt to cut out, everything is on the 1/2 inch. The pattern is from the book Celtic Pieced Illusions by Karen Combs. If you are interested in Celtic knot quilt designs, I highly recommend the book. This will be my second quilt from it, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Just remember as I post my progress on it, that it starts like this, mostly squares and a couple of rectangles.

Here is the Mardi Gras quilt all cut out. It was not an easy quilt to cut out. Lots of pieces on the 1/8 inch marks, and all kinds of bias cuts. I made a few mistakes, but I decided it will work out OK. I had extra fabric to cut more pieces, done correctly for this quilt, and I figured I'd use my goofs to make a four patch and furrow quilt. I have lots of scrappy four patches waiting for me to do something with them, and now I have lots of greens and gold I can sew into HST's for the furrows. The Mardi Gras quilt will be a snail trail quilt, and I knew it was hard to cut, but the results are always worth it. Note that this quilt starts with a few squares, but mostly triangles.

Yesterday I worked on my Celtic Mystery quilt. I got step 2 done. I was working on my Double Delight as leaders and enders, and got all the sub-units for the extra center blocks completed. I trimmed all the square in a square blocks to size while I was cutting out the new quilts.

I cut all of these out with my new Martelli rotary cutter, and I am REALLY liking it. I bought the 60mm and the 45mm, but I've only used the 60mm so far. I've never had a 60mm rotary cutter before, so I was more curious about it. It really will cut through 30 layers of fabric as advertised, but I had better luck cutting squares with that many layers than triangles. It cuts just fine on either shape, I just found my accuracy was better on the triangles with fewer layers of fabric. I'm sure it is my accuracy and not the cutter that was the problem.

I am debating whether to work on the Celtic mystery while assembling the Double Delight blocks next, or jump ahead and work on my new quilts. I might bounce back and forth, but I decided the rest of the garments are on the back burner for now. I might take tomorrow off of sewing altogether. DH actually has a day off, and I'd like to spend some time with him!