Grand Illusion Week Four

Progress on the Grand Illusion mystery continues... I managed to get a few minutes in the sewing room here and there over the past week and finished a few more blocks from steps one and two before clue four was posted. I am quite confident I would have all three steps completed if it wasn't for the shopping and cooking!  I need to hire a personal assistant! Of course, assistants can be a problem when you are completely OCD like I am.  My husband was on vacation Friday and I asked him and my daughter to take care of getting a Christmas tree. I should have thought that through a little better before asking...first, neither one shares my OCD tendencies. Second, they really, really like a bargain. They were thrilled when they found a tree at Lowe's that was marked down to $4.88.  It didn't matter to them that it was the world's most crooked tree. They decided they felt sorry for it....they knew no one else would want it. I really think they did it just to mess with me.  My daughter posted it on her Facebook page right after they got it in the stand.

I did the best I could....after considerable maneuvering of the position of the trunk in the stand to make the tree appear at least somewhat upright....trying to turn it to find its "best"side....and throwing on a bunch of ornaments and tinsel, we ended up with this. Yep, it's still making me crazy. It's really hard to get good help these days!

I made fairly decent progress on step four over the weekend.  I did all of my cutting at once and even finished my cutting for step three, too. I really hate cutting but it was really nice to have it all ready to sew. I sewed all of my black and white HSTs and then sewed all of the half blocks. I was happy to find that I only sewed three of them the wrong way....not too much rework.  Then I started putting the halves together. Three blocks in I figured out that I was putting the wrong halves together...so a little more rework.  I managed to get half of my blocks completed before breaking to cook dinner last night.

I still have 39 of the second block to finish. I'm hoping to catch up on all four clues while I am off this week.  Of course, the sewing will have to wait until the shopping, wrapping and cookie baking is finished.  I know better than to ask my husband to help....

To see how other Grand Illusion quilters are progressing, check out the Mystery Link-up on Bonnie's blog.