2008 QT Summer Mystery

W hat a blast!! I'm veering between total and utter exhaustion and super pumped LOL .. i LOVED it!! Today was mystery day .. Ann Smith designed "If I had a nickel..." for members of her mystery list and quilt-talk. This also ended up being a sew-in on One Stitch at a Time as well .. I think that's what made it the most fun. She gave us the fabric requirements back in late June I think. This mystery is composed of 5" squares - she did 4 sizes for us too! I've never done a mystery and wasn't totally sure about this one .. but since the crib size only needed roughly 2 yards of fabric, I figured I had nothing to loose and this was designed for a scrappy quilt - and I have scraps! So I dove into my scrap pile and came up with these guys .. i cut them up and put them in zip lock baggies so they couldn't attach to the cats and walk away ;)

First clue was at 8am EST .. well i did my darnedest to get up, but just couldn't keep my eyes open .. that'll teach me for staying up late the nite before .. I ended up getting up around 9 and was starting around 9:30 or so .. Good thing that I was doing the crib size as while I was checking and drinking my first coffee, clue 2 went up :| .. Ann's instructions were super simple and very clear. This is the end of Clue 2.

While I was selecting what lights to put with what darks, had the idea to sort of keep colour groups .. when I got to the dark green tho, I was going to put orange in and went pink instead .. I started to kick myself later, but Carmen said that I would be surprised how great it would look .. I was doubtful, but there wasn't to much I could do about it at this point ..

As you can see here, I ended up putting the orange with blues .. this is where I was like .. oh man .. the pinks would have looked SOOOOO much better here than these oranges ... and the orange would go very nicely with green .. but at this point I figured that there is going to be an opportunity to put these greens and oranges together. So at that point I was good with my choice .. at this time I was still running 2 clues behind .. Ann was uploading them roughly every 2 hours for us ..

AHA .. I KNEW I would be able to get those greens with the oranges somewhere down the line .. and it was looking really good at this point .. I've been told that I'm very intuitive when it comes to colour .. not sure if I entirely believe that, but picking colours does come easy for me and I don't have to agonize over my choices very often .. when I do end up struggling with them, that usually means that the colours I've picked just aren't going to work out .. Next time I do this pattern (and I will do it again), I'm going to make bloody sure that my 5" squares are 5" .. some of these nickels I got in swaps or from where ever .. I can't even tell you ..I had Aunt Gracie material in here, and I have never bought a strip of it in my life .. at this point, I was gauging everything off the HSTs as those were square as I had just done them .. what a grueling clue THAT was!

Here we are at the end of Clue 7 - while reading the clue, i had decided to take my 2 colour 'groups' that I did and use them in each block .. i figured that this would have a really neat affect when the final layout was done ... the HSTs are made up of a light and a medium fabric .. but since I did this scrappy, I knew that one would be darker than the other and I might end up with a neat colourwash affect .. wasn't sure it would work tho, but was willing to try it .. if anything it would be a nice break / contrast to the blocks and create some movement.

Off and on throughout the day, my speed bump decided to come for a visit .. she's laying in the 'path' from the computer chair to the sewing machine ...and of course she is right next to where I stand when I cut - so I got plenty of exercise stepping over her today :) Of course throughout the whole mystery time, the group mail was going NUTS .. not so much on quilt-talk, but on OST .. we had ourselves quite the gabfest during the mystery .. I'm amazed that we even got anything done :) heh poor Pix couldn't find the right seat to sleep on - he was constantly being moved so I could sit down .. he gave up and took my modem hostage instead :)

In Clue 8, Ann gave us about 4 layouts and challenged us to come up with a new one ... I did :D I really like this - and this wouldn't have looked so good if it wasn't scrappy .. while it doesn't have the colourwash affect, there is a great deal of movement in it - the TOTs really make this quilt sing too! This quilt has a few lumps in it, and as you can see some of my points don't meet .. I still have to do the borders, Ann's pattern didn't have one, but I'm sure that I can come up with something for this ..

Ann, thank you - I had an absolute blast doing this and look forward to your next mystery.

heh .. there's still the next abstract impression piece to do, crayon work, postcards, my 1800s quilt, basting kyle's quilt, quilting kitty quilt and a mess of other things .. I think I have a few things to keep me busy for a bit

But first I think I need some sleep ;) and lookie this . it's NOT 5am for a change :D