Celtic Solstice Part 2..........keeping things scrappy......

Greetings Kevin the Quilter Blog Readers!

This time of year, I am usually decking the halls, and in the Christmas spirit.

For some reason, I have lost my yuletide mojo?????  I can't for the life of me wrap my mind around the fact that Thanksgiving was a week and a half ago and Christmas is right around the corner!  Where did 2013 go??????  I am alone here?

Anywho......

I am enjoying Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice Mystery!  I am loving the Facebook splinter group Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice.  I have met some wonderful people in this group!  There is some wonderful dialogue and great photos are posted within the members.  Everyone seems to be keeping on the up and up, and not WHINING! LOL

Celtic Solstice Part 2 came out on Friday morning, and I thought I would share some of the way I work when trying to keep things scrappy.  Don't think of this as much as a tutorial, but, as me sharing some basic tips I have learned to use in a Bonnie Hunter mystery.

DISCLAIMER

I in NO WAY think I am an expert, I am just showing the way I do things!

I personally want the most variety as possible in a scrappy quilt.  I also like using as many pieces as possible, and in a Bonnie Hunter quilt, you can use up some pretty small pieces!  When a new clue comes out I:

Read the directions thoroughly, finding the dimensions of the units we will be working on.

I then go through my smallest scraps in the colors we are using to see what will work out size wise.  Again, variety is key here.  I am blessed to have a variety of scraps to choose from.  

  Here is a sampling of the silver pieces I found that would work.

I have substituted silver for the gold in my color scheme.

There are 2.5" strips, as well as some 1/4 yard cuts.

I even found some 2.5 squares that I cut down for this step.

I personally cut everything needed for the units before I start sewing a step.  In this step, we needed to cut  2" squares of two different colors.

A fat quarter strip measuring approximately 21" will render approximately 10 2" squares.

We needed 200 2" squares for one color alone.  After finding all of the smaller pieces that would work, I dug into strips, and chose about 17 different strips that would work.  That gave me 170 squares in addition to what I got from the small stuff.

(I hope this helps some of you who may wonder about how much to cut from each step?)

Here are all of the pieces needed, cut out and ready to be sewn.

My neutrals are Bonnie's neutral, my gold is Bonnie's green, and my silver is Bonnie's gold.

Confused yet?

I then lay the pieces as they go together and chain piece one section at a time.......that way I don't get confused.

Here, I have chain pieced several of the neutral units already.  I do lay them out, like pieces together, and work my way from left to right, one at a time.  The gold units are in no particular order which will add to the scrappiness.

Here is a better picture with many silvers to choose from.  The top stack of 2" silver squares is the most abundant, so I try to intersperse them throughout the other silvers.  Again, I chain piece, each piece of the unit until completing that part.  This helps me keep things straight.

Left side of the chevron waiting for their right side!

This looks like a cool pattern?  HMMMMMM??????

And here is a sampling of the completed units (needing a little trimming here and there!).

I feel there is some nice variety here!

Linking up with Bonnie's Link-up!

We are already up to:

1200 pieces!!!!!!

(for the smaller quilt)

And we have only received 2 parts of the mystery so far!

SCRAP HAPPY!

I hope you enjoyed my little scrappy seminar!

As always, thanks for ALL of the encouragement!

If you find my Christmas spirit, could you send it back to me PLEASE!

Kevin the Quilter