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It's a Mystery

Sunday, January 08, 2012 7 Comments »
A few months ago, I got a subscription offer from McCall's Quilting.  If I renewed my subscription, I could gift another to a friend for free.  I thought of my buddy Marsha, sent off the subscription, and then forgot about it.  When the first magazine arrived, Marsha promtly noticed that it contained the first part of a 3-part mystery quilt -- "new & easy", it said, and "only 4 fabrics".  Little did I know that doing a mystery quilt was on Marsha's bucket list of quilting things to do.  Would I do it with her?  Please?

The quilters addiction enablement alarm bell went off in my head;  too many project coming up, not sure about the commitment. yada yada yada.  But this was Marsha asking.  I love Marsha, and I am weak.  So very weak. 

I also happen to enjoy doing mystery quilts.  Although they are not everyone's cup of tea, an occasional mystery is a challenge for me -- an entertaining break, and a chance to do something out of my comfort zone, and now a chance to share the experience with a friend. 

The folks at McCalls set everything up quite nicely, especially for a beginner.  The hardest part of doing a mystery is choosing the fabrics.  How the heck to you pick fabrics when you have no idea where they will be going?  This mystery uses only 4 fabrics and there are very clear directions about what values to pick: 

  • Fabric A is a multi-color fabric that will be the focus fabric;
  • Fabric B is a non-directional tone-on-tone, and is the opposite value of Fabric C (for instance, if you choose light for B, the C will be dark, and vice-versa);
  • Fabric C is a non-directional small-to-medium scale print that is the opposite value of B;
  • Fabric D is another fabric that plays well with the others, it can be light or dark, directional or not.  
Not only did they give these clues for choosing fabrics, they provided 4 sets of exacmples that their editors had chosen -- this extra step, which I have not seen in other mysteries, made choosing the fabrics ever so much easier.  


Here are the fabrics I chose,  and my start on the first part of the mystery.  I need to do 40 of those hour glass blocks, and 20 of the other block.  They are 6" unfinished, and will finish at 5.5". 



I think Marsha has hers done already, but I'm not racing -- I'm just enjoying the ride!

By the way, don't let any of my granddaughters see this post.  I have a feeling the finished quilt is destined for one of them. 

7 comments:

howdidIgethere said...

You beat me to it! I hope, later today, to post my mystery quilt fabrics, etc. Love the brights you chose. My palette is kind of different from what I am usually attracted to.

BTW, I just noticed that Owen's birthday is the day before mine. Of course he was "new" that day, while I just chalked up the latest of many.

I'll send you the link when I put my post up.

Kristi said...

I saw this in my magazine as well and thought about doing it....then I forgot about it.
Currently I do have a few projects going on but I should set that magazine to the side away from all my others so I can possibly try to do that sometime this year!
Hope it's fun!

Annaliese said...

HOW FUN!!

Mrs.Pickles said...

very neat. can;t wait to see the end product

howdidIgethere said...

OK... so here's mine:
http://newfutureahead.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-mystery-quilt.html

Denise in PA said...

I saw that mystery in McCalls and really liked that they showed the different fabric combos chosen. I like your choices!

Barb said...

your header is soooooooooo funny!!

I have yet to do a mystery quilt....but enjoy seeing others.