Grand Illusion - week 1

Are you quilting along with hundreds of other quilters doing Bonnie Hunter's 2014 mystery quilt, Grand Illusion?

I've joined in again this year.  I decided to use the same colors that Bonnie used because I think they are very feminine and will make a great baby quilt for my niece-to-be who's due in March.

I'm going to make 1/4 of the units Bonnie's pattern calls for.  If my math is right, this should work out to a nice baby-sized quilt.  I got all the pieces cut out on Friday night.  I woke up at 5 am on Saturday and since I couldn't fall back to sleep, I got up and started sewing the units together.

Here's some of my half-square triangle units:

I sewed for almost three hours and got all the week 1blocks put together.  Here's a guess at how these might go together:

 

I love the aqua star that shows up!

If you put all of these together, you would end up with something like this:

 

It's very pretty, but you lose the stars.  What's your guess as to how these might go together? Check out everyone's progress over on Bonnie's Blog! 

Edited to add: Have you seen how many other quilter's are participating?  As of right now, it's almost 200!!

In other sewing news, I quilted Harvey and am working on handsewing the binding to the back of the quilt.  I also finished a little play mat for my nephew, Adam.  It's some yardage with roads and buildings.  I quilted along the roads and outlined the buildings.  I bought a few wooden cars that he can use to drive along the playmat.  Of course, he can also use it as a nap quilt.  I'm looking for the perfect drawstring bag pattern to put the wooden cars in so he doesn't lose them.  Slowly, I'm checking off my Christmas sewing list.

I did make a start at the Schnibbles and a Little Bit More quilt for November.  It was Mini Stems by Fig Tree Quilts.  I got as far as sewing all the petals/leaves together but that was it.  I really needed to work on the Christmas sewing.

Check back next week to see if I complete the week 2 units!