Orca Bay Mystery and UFO #5

I love Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay Mystery quilt! She revealed the finished quilt yesterday and I just gasped! I finished all the components, squared them all up and put half of them on my design wall today ('cuz my design wall isn't big enough for all the blocks). I'm in love with it! I didn't use the colors Bonnie suggested--these are MY colors, and I just hoped they would work as well as hers. What do you think?

I named it "Azalea Bay" because of the colors. There are 3,564 pieces in this quilt and so far, I've put 47 hours and 20 minutes into it's construction--worth every minute! After sewing it together and quilting it, there'll probably be more like 70 hours into it. But I loved the process, learned a lot and will do another Bonnie Hunter mystery again in a heartbeat. (I have a different post about this quilt and the process of making it on Bonnie's blog that you might want to look for).



I'm also doing Judy's UFO Challenge and this is my #5 for January: "Anteitam". This was a Linda Ballard mystery class my quilt guild did and I just love the quilt and the colors. The top is finished and I'm looking forward to quilting it but I just hate to pin quilts! I don't have a good place to do it and I can't get on the floor any more as it kills my back. But, I will get it done!

See what everyone else has to show on Judy's Design Wall Monday! I always learn something new from going to everyone's blog.

Mystery Revealed!

Before you read any further, open your mouth wide and inhale noisily. . . go ahead. . . THAT is the sound I made this morning when, still half asleep, I logged on to Quiltville.com where Bonnie Hunter had just revealed her Orca Bay Mystery quilt for all to see. OMG---what a spectacular quilt ! ! ! !

I had seen many of the finished quilts from Bonnie's past mysteries and vowed I'd make one some day even though they looked like a LOT of work. I had high expectations but the fact that I used colors different from Bonnie's had me a little worried. And, since I'd kept track of the time each of the 8 steps took to make as well as the number of pieces used in my very scrappy quilt, I almost dreaded seeing what the quilt would look like--what if I did all that work and spent all those hours as was disappointed?

Obviously, I needn't have worried. I'm SO, SO happy with my quilt! What do you think? This photo shows about half of the blocks I made but it's as big as I can go on my design wall. I'm calling it "Azalea Bay" because Orca just doesn't fit my purple and pink with green color-way. I love Azaleas and they're these colors so it seemed to fit.

So, what are my time and piece totals? I have all the components completed and squared up, all I need to do it sew the top together and so far, I've spent 47 hours and 20 minutes on it. And, give or take a few, there are about 3,564 pieces in my quilt! I'm sure that's a record for me even after making well over 100 quilts in 14 years. By the time I'm finished putting it together and quilting it, I think I'll be in the 70 hour range.

I've learned a lot making this quilt: That the Companion Angle Ruler is a slick tool I'd never tried before, that string piecing is fun, that phone book pages make perfect string piece foundations and that I love making hundred and hundreds of the same little components, chain-piecing my heart out! Who knew?

Bonnie: Thank you for gifting us with your creativity, your expertise and your generosity. If you do this again next year, I'll be right with you!

I'm sure a lot of people have posted their success of this Orca Bay mystery on Judy Laquadara's Design Wall Monday. I urge you to look at all of them!