Bonnie Hunter Mad City Mama Class - Fabric Fanatics

Happy New Year!  This is year FOUR for me meeting up with the gals in Plano and spending the day with Bonnie Hunter.  What a great tradition it has been.  Today I am off and running to Fabric Fanatics for our Mad City Mama class.  Now, I will be honest and say that I am not sure I love this quilt yet, but am oh so happy to be using up all those 1 1/2" strips of "ugly" fabric in the tote.  If there was ever a place for them -- this is it.  All I have to take to class today is my tote of those plus a few black squares and even fewer purple ones.  Let's get started.

The minute Bonnie walks into class she hangs the Allietare quilt that was revealed last night.  Oh, if I thought I liked the colors before --- now I have moved right past love to adoration.  Isn't this incredible?  You can follow my Allietare journey by clicking on THIS LINK.  It's been such fun.

Allison stayed up last night working on hers and has a completed corner -- Woohoo.  That definitely needs a memory picture.

She has even started her back by using the letter panels to spell Allietare.  I love that she does this and will contribute to it each time I find these lovely letters.  Please welcome -- Miss Texas Quilter - Allison Bayer.  (psst -- she has the wave down pat doesn't she?  I wonder if there is a story there.)

Okay, now back to the reason for this post.  We are at Mad City Mama class today and our first task is to simply sew 1 1/2" strips together haphazardly, just trying not to put two of the same color next to each other.  JANET is here today and I am incredibly happy to see her as my table mate.  Woot woot.  With Allison, Marti, and Janet -- it is indeed a happy world to be in.


Irene is still in her corner of the world as is Lee Ann, who is going to hate me for this picture.  Oh well.  Lee Ann has her daughter, Hayley here -- and I WILL get a picture of her at retreat whether she likes it or not.  Be warned Hayley.  Notice how Lee Ann just irons away back in the corner, while Allison drags the ironing board out near everyone else so she doesn't miss a thing.  Dang cute.

I am getting a ton of UGLY strip sets.  Sure hope this plan works.

Oh goodness --- look at my 25 patch.  Yep - the same size as my hand span.  They don't look AS ugly now.  Bonnie always says, "If it's still ugly, you didn't cut it small enough."  I think that's being proven today.

Lunch time and show and share ---    I have my Bow Ties quilt to share.  How I love the way this one turned out after all my time with it rip, rip, ripping.

And my "Gran Delusion" that most of you know as Grand Illusion.  It's done -- that's what I have to say.

And the back

Time to get back to work with a demo on the next step.

I want to get most of my strip sets that are already made, cut and sewn first before moving on to this step so I am busy building a nice little stack of variety.

The next step is to take some of those strip sets and add flip and sew black corners to them in a snowball fashion.  Let's hope that helps those strips that didn't get cut down to finish in tiny squares.

I get a few more made and start adding the black squares.

Voila --- they are transformed.

Okay, let's grab those centers and put together a couple of blocks.  Oooooh.  I think I like them now.  Just busy but not as ugly.  This could work out after all.

Allison has used funny cartoons as her centers.  What a hoot.

Now I've stolen some pictures from Bonnie's site to share with you.

Look at our lovely vintage machine table.  Love it - and three more at the table in the back.

What a fun day.  My statin is all cleaned up and I am ready for day four tomorrow.  Thanks to this lovely lady - Barbara - my sweet Featherweight -- for another stupendous day ---- even IF Allison and I fought our seam allowance ALL DAY!  Ugh.  The blocks turned out pretty cool.  See you all tomorrow.