A Quiltville Mystery Quilt!
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I know this is a busy time for many of us because of the stress of the holidays, etc. I myself am contemplating a move out of state, and have so much going on with selling a house and buying a house..what am I thinking?!
 
I have a quilt in mind. I posted on my blog to tantilize my readers into following along with me. One lady wrote back and said she wanted to follow along and make it with me as a mystery quilt! I thought...what fun! OK..I'm up for this!
 
Maybe some of you out there would be interested too? If not, you can read along and watch the quilt come together and when you see the final project, you might just be enticed to make it after the fact!
 
The units are super easy. You can use scraps for this. But because it is scraps, I'm not going to supply yardage charts. I will tell you that the quilt in my head turns out about 80"X80" which is a full size coverlet...not long enough to go over the pillows, but big enough for a bed topper.

Because my life is crazy right now...I'm not sure how often I'll post each unit, but I will tell you how many of each unit you will need and you can work along on them with me! Do you trust me? :c) Do you have time to work with me? This could be fun, I've never designed a mystery before! I will send out an email post each time a next step is added to my blog. You can check there for pics and instructions for each step. I will also post them here on my website!

You don't even need to spend hours doing all the cutting at one time. I will tell you what to cut for each unit before you sew it so you can get sewing right away!

You can make this quilt using any three colors as your guide. I'm doing red/neutral/blue.  You could choose green/neutral/purple, or black/white/fuscia or brown/neutral/gold or any three colors you can come up with.

If you want the design to show up....and not be too muddy, I think 3 colors might be best. OR....you could do multi colors and muslin...but chose ONE SOLID (or tone on tone) color for an accent fabric...so say..if you had all multi colors and muslin...and set aside a piece of BLUE or RED or ORANGE or GREEN (or whatever to add punch)as an "accent" to tie it all together so the design doesn't get lost in the scrappiness..make sense??

Wherever you see the RED in my blocks needs to be where your accent color goes. So if you are doing scrappy....use muslin only for where you see me put "LIGHT"  pieces. If you see red...it needs to be that accent color (not light)that you choose.

Maybe this is a cheater mystery! If you want to ask me design questions so that you don't make a big boo-boo in your choices, I'm happy to answer (without trying to give too much info away in the process!)

All the pieces for this quilt can be cut from 1.5" strips and 2" strips, 2 1/4" strips and a few 3.5" squares.  I can't even tell you how many strips of whatever you'll need because I am cutting from shirts. I can tell you the number of units you'll need, but your strips may vary depending upon how long your strips are.

***YARDAGE*** I am approximating 3 yards of each color to complete this top, finishing at  80"X80" I am hoping this is a bit on the generous side, knowing we'd rather have too much of a good thing than not enough!

Of course the biggest challenge for you is to use STASH. And because this quilt uses 1.5" strips...you can use UGLY stash, it's cut so small, no one can tell just how ugly it is when it gets into it's finished state :c)
 

This quilt is perfect to learn how to use the specialty rulers I love and use so much in my scrap quilting!

You can purchase the companion angle ruler by clicking the pic above! You will be linked through Amazon.com and the ruler is usually listed at a discounted price.  I  have partnered with Amazon to make shopping for these gadgets and notions easy for you! Click on the ruler pic and you will be taken through my Amazon Portal!
 
Any other questions?
 

Let's Get Started!!


Unit #1: 100 rail fence blocks!

The beginning of this project came as I was cutting down salvaged shirt pieces into 1.5" strips. I started with 3 bins. Plastic shoe boxes work great!  Cut up a generous amount of strips in each color and keep them handy by your machine. If you don't cut enough, don't worry, you can cut more later!  The thing that I always hated before scrap quilting was cutting out a WHOLE QUILT before I could sew. Pfffffttt.....I like to cut a little, and sew a little and press a little and sew a bit more, and then cut more if I need more. I like variety :c)

The blocks above were made by sewing a 1.5" red strip in between two 1.5" blue strips.  Remember, the red is the constant accent color. Your two other strips could be any other color, or a multitude of scrap colors as long as they read "medium to dark" in value. Wherever you see red in my blocks is where your accent color is going to go to bring the design together!

Continuously chain piece long strips together, pressing seams AWAY FROM the center strip. Sub-cut the strip sets into 3.5" units.

When they are done, you can put them in a zip log baggie for safe keeping and wait for the next step!!

 No peeking forward until you have the 100 rail fence blocks done!

Click here to go to step 2!