Orca Bay, Part 1!!

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I know many of you have dug and sorted and shopped and arranged and pulled and culled and pressed and STRESSED over this quilt!

Today is the day we start cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,cutting, and sewing,

Whew! Are you tired yet?!

How do you like our "temporary logo??" Our friend Forest Jane took my logo from yesterday's post and made it SO MUCH BETTER! Feel free to steal this graphic, or either of these smaller ones for your own blog side bars, face book pages, websites and link back to us!



Remember, this is NOT a race. Just do what you can. Cut for a while, sew for a while. Take breaks. Stay hydrated. Get out of the sewing chair, stretch and bend and take a walk and get the mail and come back in, defrost something for dinner, and get back at it again.

This would be a great time to plan a crockpot meal so your family can think you cooked hard ALL. DAY. LONG. and yet you had all this time to focus on your mystery project because dinner was handled!

Run a load of laundry. Fold it during a break…but leave it out on the bed so others “KNOW” you’ve been busy doing the laundry-- There are lots of things you can do to make it look like you’ve “done something else constructive” all day long!

Let’s get to it!

Unit #1! Quarter Square Triangles!

We are going to use the companion angle ruler for these units, along with 1.5” strips of both black, and our neutrals. These units will measure 2.5” when sewn, and will finish at 2” in the quilt. If you don’t want to use this method, use any method for quarter square triangles that gives you a 2” finished unit.

For instance, you can layer a 3-1/4" Neutral square with a 3-1/4" black square with right sides together, and cut them twice on the diagonal with an X to yield 4 pairs of triangles ---

And there is a "draw-and-sew-and-cut-and-press-and-draw-and-sew-and-cut-and-press" type of method HERE.

I don't keep 3-1/4" squares on hand in my Scrap bins. I'd have to cut them all. Every. Single. One.
But I do keep 1.5" strips on hand! And they work so easily with my Companion Angle Ruler, so I'm going to use that method here ---

Dig into those 1.5” strip bins and pull out what neutrals ((white, cream, beige)) strips and black strips as you can find. Need more? Cut some from your hunks and chunks of scraps and from your fat quarters and yardage. How many strips you need depends on the number of cuts you can get down one strip set --- I don’t worry about how MANY strips I need..I count units as I cut them, stack them into stacks of 10 or 20 pairs…then graduate them into piles of 100, etc. I keep count as I cut…

Go for variety! If your strips are full width of fabric, 40” or so….cut those strips in half so you can pair them each with something else so you don’t have the same thing showing up next to the same thing all the time throughout the quilt.

I loved using up some of the really “doggy” ones! GET THEM OUT OF THERE! What are you saving these for anyway? Don’t worry about the print on them, or how old they are – just go by color family and go with it.

Cutting – Layer a neutral strip and a black strip with right sides together as shown. Using the 1.5” line down the center of the ruler Cut 448 PAIRS ((Meaning one neutral and one black—you get one PAIR with each cut—)) of quarter square triangles. Yes. I know this is a lot. But they are small, and we need them to cover a lot of ground! Just do 100 at a time. Then sew the 100. Then come back and cut 100 more. You have all week to do it, it won’t be a problem!

What?? You mean Thanksgiving is this coming THURSDAY!? ;c) It doesn’t take as long as you think it does, seriously! Just do it!

Stitch the pairs by feeding them as shown through the machine, all with the light on top, all with them pointing in this same direction, or you will end up with some pairs that won’t match the others. Ask me how I know! Keep them fed all the same and you will be fine.

Press all these little black/neutral lovelies toward the darker triangle. TRIM YOUR DOG EARS! Seriously. I never understood why anyone would still want them in there, no matter how sentimental that fabric is. It makes it hard to join a nice square to a unit with 4 dog ears sticking out around the corners. Mix and match your pairs and stitch together into 224 hour glass units. Press. Any way you want. Press that center seam open, or spin it around in 4 patch fashion as shown HERE. Or simply press to one side as I did.

All of mine have two different blacks, and two different neutrals. Just showing you one of MANY here..if I showed you the whole stack you’d likely suffer an apoplexy and give up right then and there.

PS. If this happens to anyone, feel free to name me in your will for any remaining stash ;c)

Here’s two! Only 222 to go! Measure your units. They should be 2.5” square at this point. If they are too small? There are only two things that can cause this. It’s not the ruler. It’s not the machine itself. It’s either your cutting, or your seam allowance. Or both! Use this time to find out WHERE your seam needs to be to get the results you need, rather than cutting big and sewing big and trimming everything down. Use tape if you have to to mark your seam line on the machine bed.

If you have a machine with a 1/4” foot that has a seam guide on it, please know that those can create a false sense of security. If you are forcing your fabric up against that guide because you can’t SEE the fabric at the edge of your foot, you can over shoot your 1/4”. Run a test seam and see.

If your units are short because you are cutting the strips too narrow to begin with, no matter how perfect your 1/4” seam is, your unit will STILL turn out too small.

When I’m rotary cutting, I don’t use the lines on the mat. I use the lines on the ruler, and I make sure that the marking on the ruler is ON the fabric…NOT "off-of-the-fabric-but-right-next-to-the-fabric". I want the line sitting on top of the fabric with the outside edge of that line at the cut edge of the fabric. This gives me just a few extra threads that are needed…because when you press the seam to one side, you LOSE some fabric in the depth of that seam press. Make sense?

Have a blast with this! Turn up some music….Dance around the room…put your best friend on speaker phone and cut up a storm ----put your favorite movie in the DVD player and “barely listen” ---- one of my favorite movies to play that we quote over and over in my home is Ferris Beuhler --- or the PRINCESS BRIDE!

It’s going to be a GREAT Mystery!



**Note** Please remember that "Orca Bay" is a limited edition mystery! All steps will be pulled on May 1st, 2012 and retired from the blog and website as this quilt is appearing in a future book due out in July 2012. Print now, I will be unable to provide them to you after April 30th!