Grand Illusion Begins

A lot has been going on to keep me away from the blog.  A trip to sunny Florida

that included a stop at my favorite quilt shop

The Quilt Place. The shop with thousands of bolts of fabric (even I couldn't put a dent in that inventory). 

An early Family Thanksgiving

followed a couple of weeks later by the regular Thanksgiving. 

Trying to get motivated to begin on the holiday decorating.

Right now there's 4 bare trees up with no plan to get started.  I've got a slight issue with my knee that's putting a damper on multiple trips up and down stairs to gather materials.

Fortunately Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion mystery quilt project kicked off on Black Friday so I looked at it as a means to give my arthritic knee a break and parked my butt in front of my machine and over 3 days and approximately 6 (or was it 7?) sappy Hallmark Christmas movies I was able to knock out Part 1. 

I was even able to furl the intersecting seams on 100 blocks. 

280 HST's. Thank you to whoever it was that invented Thangles!

If you'd like to see how everyone else is doing, check this out: http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2014/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-1.html

And if you'd like to join me and start your own Grand Illusion Mystery, click on the link in my sidebar.