Clue 2: It's a Mystery!

[Music] hey everyone karen the warp spinster here thanks for joining me on my channel this is clue two for the mystery quilt that started last week if you are interested in doing the quilt but haven't looked at that first video you want to go back and check on it's a mystery clue one this just to review is about using up some of those two and a half inch squares in our stashes and there are two different sizes you can work on one is 72 by 90 and the other is 90 by 108 so you can make your choice based on that i'm doing the smaller size the 72 by 90 and we have a lot of squares here today we're going to start sewing those squares together so let's get started the first step actually doesn't involve sewing you will want to first of all go and just pull out single squares for the smaller quilt you want to pull out 20 and set them aside for the larger quilt pull out 30 and set them aside i will be putting all these numbers down in the description for your reference later then we get to the sewing this quilt is designed to just use the two and a half inch squares as they are no further cutting or sewing just to keep the character the two and a half inch squares quick easy but something with some character to it so we're going to be sewing strips of these two inch squares the next size strip we we save single squares now we're going to start sewing strips and the first set you're going to do involve two squares now i'll warn you ahead of time i'm pretty sure i'm going to be calling these two inch strips instead of two square strips but you'll know what i mean and for the smaller quilt you will want 40 sets of these two square strips and for the larger quilt you'll want 60. you can press the seams in either direction if you've got a dark and a light go ahead and press it toward the dark it's not going to matter later on or you can press them open if you prefer to press open your seams i continue to make even when i've gone past my 40 because i'm making the smaller size i will continue to make sets of two squares because i can use them for the other strips that we're doing there's building blocks for the longer strips and the next set is going to be three strips so you could just sew of course a lot of pairs and then do assembly line sewing for all of this and just add on another square don't be too concerned or too fussy about what goes next to what you aren't going to know what these end up against later on in the quilt anyway and just i just make sure that i don't have two of the same too close to the same color or the exact same print next to each other other than that i don't worry about it so you will need of the three square strips for the smaller quilt you'll want 40 and for the larger quilt you'll want 60. and i've gotten a start on some of them here here's my three strips i've got a bunch of two strips when the three straps you can press them i would just press them all in the same direction it doesn't matter which direction because these can be easily flipped in the final design so just press them all in the same direction and that's it for the three strips next up you have six strips six squares in a strip and for that you will need 60 for the smaller quilt and 90 for the larger quilt i did go through and add these up and they do come out to the correct number of squares which is always a relief when you're designing a quilt and again when you press them press them all in one direction or press them open if you prefer although that's kind of um takes more i find it takes more time and that's it for this clue so to review that here you are going to go and pull out some single squares and you will need 20 for the smaller quilt 30 for the larger quilt for the two square strips you will need 40 for the smaller quilt and 60 for the larger quilt then you will need strips with three squares oops that's the wrong one and you will need 40 for the smaller quilt 60 for the larger and finally you'll need some six strip sets let's do it this way so it all stays in frame i hope and for that you will need 60 for the smaller quilt and 90 for the larger i think i'm going to allow two weeks to do these because especially if you're doing the larger one that's a fair amount of sewing it's not difficult at all but it's a fair amount of sewing and i know everyone has busy lives especially for moms and dads whose kids are in school now and all kinds of activities so this is clue two i am going to stay on and just sew together and chat for a while i've had a few people mention that they like that while they're sewing it also gives you an excuse to have some time set aside to just dedicate to sewing so i'm going to just stay on for another i don't know probably 20 or 30 minutes if that's not your thing then i thank you for tuning in for clue 2. i'm anxious to see what all of you are doing at some point probably a little further along i think maybe i'll start a facebook group or something where we can start sharing what we're doing and seeing what each other is doing and chat about the mystery quilt if you're leaving us now thanks for dropping by to pick up clue number two clue number three will be available in two weeks i will have some videos in between but they won't be the mystery videos if you are going to hang out with me for a while stay tuned if you are leaving for now be well be happy be quilting peace out thanks for staying with me for some quilting and chatting i'm just going to chatter fairly mindlessly i hope you chat back to me even if i can't hear you i can hear you in spirit or something not sure it works that way but we can just join ours our quilting spirits together i'm just going to be sewing a lot of two square segments together because i can use them for making my larger longer strips i've done quite a number already i need 40 of those but i can just keep making them because of course i can sew the the pairs into the six square strips so i'm just going to be doing that and just chatting so how how are all of you doing i worry about everybody in these times with covered raging everywhere and forest fires in the u.s and floods everywhere and i'm hoping you all are okay i'm thinking about you all and hoping you are well and i'm also thinking about some other videos i i want to do if you have ideas for what you'd like to see please put them down in the comments and i'll see what i can do within reason i'm also working on my next newsletter which there's another pair i like it which will be due out october 1st and i sort of think about it in my head throughout the quarter but it comes down to brass tacks here at the end of this month i hope you've all signed up for the newsletter if you wish to i promise i won't send you a bunch of email occasionally if i have a pattern that comes out for example i might send an email to you but otherwise it's just the quarterly newsletter i'm not going to inundate your inbox i don't like that either and you can sign up for that newsletter at the bottom of any page on my website which is just warpspinster.com and that's enough about me this isn't about promoting me this is about quilting what things are you working on besides this mystery quilt are you someone who who just does one quilt at a time until it's finished or are you like me and have 150 things going on at once i'm working on a pattern you may have seen it sorry this chatting is going to be so choppy but i fear you can't hear me over the sewing machine especially when i'm over to the side here the pattern i'm working on the written pattern i'm working on is for pointless and you may have seen it on my facebook page or instagram and the the pattern process i discovered when i started writing patterns years ago that it's not as easy as one might think or one might hope it's a lot of work and checking and rechecking and i have a my sister is my technical editor and she is bar none the best one around she she catches everything the only time i've had to publish an error um notice on my website was years ago and she had told me that was an error and i just skipped right by it and published it without correcting it so the errors if they exist are my own so i i am fortunate that i have another pair of eagle eyes well a pair of eagle eyes i wouldn't say minor i wouldn't say i'm exactly eagle-eyed but she does a good job of making sure i'm minding my p's and q's she's also quite good about letting me know she quilts as well and she's pretty good about letting me know more nicely than this but basically huh what are you trying to say here she's much nicer about it of course but there are times and then i go back and look at it and say i haven't got a clue i don't know why i was saying it that way sometime i may do a class or a youtube video or something about some hints or tips for writing patterns as an experienced quilter it sometimes as i'm writing the patterns and doing very detailed explanations i i have to remind myself that not everybody has been quilting for 40 years and the step-by-step are important for them i'm also particular about the pressing and people who have talked to me about my pattern say that's one of the things that they like is that it has the pressing instructions anyway back to what everyone's quilting don't need to keep coming back to me straight in straight in would you believe oh yes i got a pin cushion here what am i saying i have actually my do you have one of these magnetic pin cushions love those if i happen to dump something on the floor i could just go over and pick them up just pressing on that and that's ready to go already other quilts i'm working on that's how i got sidetracked i'm always working on a lot of them i'm embarrassed to say i'm working on a night at the improv quilt and i'm so admiring the quilts that i'm seeing on instagram and facebook i'm part of a modern quilt group on facebook and oh man there are some wow talented quilters out there i'm i gotta say and instagram yikes gorgeous stuff coming out of there it's very inspiring some days it feels a little intimidating but it is inspiring there's so much talent out there and the designers are wonderful and and the things that i see people doing with their long arm machines or their domestic machines with quilting is just amazing pardon me i have a frog in my throat it looks like i'm being picky about what i choose from here and i sort of am but not really i'm just i've sort of got different collections stacked differently in here in different places so i'm reaching to pair squares from different collections together so having said that um down in the comments just let me know the kinds of things you're working on or favorite designers or favorite quilts i don't think they let you post photos do they i don't think so we are going to have to start a facebook group or something to share things i think i definitely want to do that for this mystery quilt but maybe just as a group of quilters getting together or things that quilts that you have made from inspiration from my youtube videos others youtube videos youtube's a wonderful resource isn't it there frankly there's a lot of crap on there but they're just really excellent people and i i keep finding quilters and other folks and other crafts that i follow that just don't have as many followers as they should so i'm trying to subscribe and like their videos mine just took off one day and i i don't know why but i'm very grateful to all of you i'm so happy that you're here and find something of value in what i do and i hope i can continue to provide that for you so let me know what you're thinking about i'm thinking about some videos on doing postcards quilted postcards or you know if you've seen the artist trading cards but i think some just little mini quilts postcards or quilts that we can send to each other i i have done i did a little test of sending a postcard a quilted postcard through the mail as a postcard and i had assumed i had understood from discussions that i'd seen everywhere that they would just hand cancel them but i'm pretty sure this one was not hand canceled it was in pretty good shape it just had a um some black area on it a little bit blackened like gray as if it went through a machine and some of the ink sort of smeared so i think it went through the canceller so in the end if i really want to make sure it gets through in good shape i would put it in an envelope and pay a little extra postage for the bulk the one that i sent through had zigzag edges as a finish rather than um a binding yeah binding um if i did a binding i think i would i don't know i could try it but i hate to and the post office anymore troubles and they already are facing now that's the u.s postal service in other countries it may be a different story if so if you've had experience then please share that because people want to know but i think that will be one that i'm doing in between excuse me in between the mystery clues excuse me let's switch water here and i have another idea for two and a half inch squares we'll see it's going to be another video of well this is what's in my head let's see how it turns out and possibly another idea after that sort of related to that one but we'll see got lots of pinks together here lots of pinks there let me grab a green just pairing these up so i can run them through i have a pretty short attention span um well i get bored easily i guess once i have something that i'm really enjoying i can focus on it and lose track of time but i generally do things in shorter periods of time in spurts of time and then come back and do more and that's sort of the approach i take with these where i will match some up and then just take them over to the machine and this is just rip them right through and then i'll do a bunch of two square strips and then i'll just stop and pull out some single squares and add some more on for the three et cetera et cetera so i don't like to just spend an hour or two pushing two and a half inch squares through i i don't know what the difference is between pushing through two and a half inch squares and adding a third one on but there's a break in there of i don't know but everyone has her own workflow i guess yours may be very different from mine you just put the petal to the metal and sew it on through all right i've got some together i'm going to over and sew here in the meantime i'm i'm listening for your ideas and for the quilts you're working on right now i find more and more as more time goes by that i'm i'm missing my local quilt store which closed um pretty yeah it was quite close to just before covet hit and i volunteered there and i taught classes there and [Music] it was so much fun it was like christmas every week with new fabric and notions coming in and i'm really missing that a year or two ago i started embarked on a journey to learn how to design fabric patterns um patterns on quilt fabric and i've been learning a lot from that and meeting some wonderful wonderful fellow surface pattern designers and some of them have fabric lines that have come out or are coming out and that's that's exciting always fun to see such nice people just like the quilting community nice people very giving and sharing so i'm fortunate to be a part of those two communities plus the library community which is also great since i retired i don't have much as much contact with that but still in touch with some friends in those days quilting really was has long been a group kind of endeavor with the quilting bees and exchanging templates and patterns from the old days it's just much easier for us to do it now with technology and social media more two square strips i hope you all are having good weather wherever you are we've got some remnants of a hurricane going up the atlantic coast i think though i don't think it's going to make landfall but creating some pretty high surf and the south has been battered with hurricane and rain so that's a long recovery from that so i hope everyone is doing okay our weather is lovely here today this is supposed to be our last quite warm day for at least a while it is the middle of september so i guess that's appropriate for here in the midwest u.s it's i think supposed to be up in the high 80s today maybe and then for the next 10 days or so in the 70s which is lovely make it more pleasant to go out and mow i just have a few more mowings i have to say i there is apparently a possum crossing from the other side of the street in in my backyard there's a i've got a high slope to the backyard runs along the main drag and ever every year the past two years there has been a dead possum either in the gutter in the street adjacent to my yard or in my yard and the one that was in the gutter did end up in my yard so i think somebody came by and just shoveled it up in to my yard and that makes me sad that possums are dying but it does seem to be a possum crossing and i wish they'd quit dying in my yard all right we've got a lot more twos let's do some threes here i need more of the threes and sixes than i do the ones and twos of course so i'm gonna just start doing some threes here matching them up i just had a comment from one of my longtime quilting friends that i haven't seen in a while except on zoom last spring i guess and she just commented on another video and i said oh hey how are you i started hosting some of my old cohorts from quilt shop days on zoom and we would just sit down and quilt together and chat for started out four hours now it started out longer than that and then kind of cut it down and as summer arrived and more people were outside doing things we decided to stop doing it until maybe the fall or late fall i guess and people are finished with their yard work for the most part and our inside again it's kind of fun revisiting some of these squares some of them are from jelly rolls where i had leftover strips and cut them into two and a half inch strips excuse me or from the the candies that motor has the packets of two and a half inch squares but a lot of them are from other quilts that i've made and i'm i'm just remembering those quilts and the nice thing about scrap clothing i think although sometimes they do get out of hand and they're they're i swear they're still cloning in my bin start calling my bin the rabbit hutch it is getting warm back here in this room and i don't have my fan set up right here i have one downstairs and you would think that by this late in the summer i would have brought it up by now wouldn't you this spot is upstairs in the addition on my house i had a bay window put in a few years ago and it it just lightened up this room tremendously and the natural light is really good for filming and my studio look at that too exactly the same in my studio the light is horrible because it's in the basement and i have no windows there and the lighting is kind of funky anyway so i would rather be down in my studio because everything is closer to hand and this table could go back to its original purpose so i may have to work on that so i can get some lighting set up downstairs that will work it's pleasant enough up here but it doesn't have my comfy chair and the layout that i like one good thing about it is that it forces me before i do a class or a video to make sure i have all the tools that i need which makes sure that i tell everyone what they're going to need all righty let's just slap a red and orange one on here i'm wondering if your color tastes have changed as mine had my mom loved warm earth tones and i loved them too i still do but in my quilting i've gone more modern thanks to my former local quilt shop it was a modern shop and honestly i wasn't at all sure when it opened how i was going to feel about that shop but i really loved it and started doing more modern quilts and really liked them and i also find that partly because of modern quilts but not entirely i'm really liking brighter colors and fabrics now i don't know if that's just part of getting older i don't know i had hypothesized at one point in my life that older women who made these really bright afghans granny square afghans and all these things that were really bright is that you know they had cataracts and they weren't seen as well and the bright colors were they could see those and which was i don't know that's kind of a i'm not pressing these the same direction let me do this again i'm just kind of willy-nilly however i feel like it um the but i'm i'm i don't know what it is but i i don't have cataracts and i see fine and and so that was really a i don't know some kind of height of arrogance or something but now it's like yeah those bright colors maybe we've just lived long enough that we don't care what people think and that's who we are and that's what we're gonna do and i don't know but i am loving the bright colors these days or maybe it's just kind of how the world is and we need something cheerful and bright in our days our lives all right i think maybe i'm going to call that a day for the video here i thank you if you've stuck with me for a while if you like having a little set aside time for sewing and chatting let me know below won't hurt my feelings if that's not what you like that's why i divided it in to two so that you get the gist of the clue to begin with and then you want to stick around you can it's been fun chatting with you and i hope to see you for the next video the next clue at least but i will also do i'll plan on another video on wednesday which i think will be yet another way to use two and a half inch squares so anyway thanks for joining me if you enjoyed this video in the mystery quilt please give it a thumbs up see you next time in the meantime be well be happy be quilting peace out

Channel: Warped Spinster

Views: 6,500

Rating: 4.9289942 out of 5

Keywords: quilts, quilting, mystery quilts, modern quilts, modernquilting, scrap quilting, 2-1/2 squares

Id: XK-y8lcUaaU

Length: 36min 54sec (2214 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021