Friday, December 2, 2022

Quiltville Chilhowie Mystery Part 2 and My Mystery Doings

After spending all of this week working on Christmas quilt projects, it's time to take a break from that because....

.... the latest Quiltville mystery post has dropped!

This week, those participating in this year's mystery will be doing strip sets and "flip and sew" corners.  You can see their progress on Instagram here and here.

I have two mystery season projects I plan to work on:  one is "Roll, Roll Cotton Boll".  Having assessed where I am with that, I'll be resuming work on making the paper foundation pieced String Squares for the next two weeks.

I see I have a block I started (front center) that needs to be finished.  As you can see I have no shortage of neutral strings (in the bags on the right) as I have been putting them with this project stash whenever I do trim cuts or have project leftovers.  On the left are the various stages the blocks go through before they are ready to go into the quilt:  pieced foundation squares that have to be trimmed then they are cut in half and finished up into big quarter square blocks.  In the back center are the "APQ Scrap Happy" blocks I was still making as leader/enders for the Christmas sewing and in the upper right corner is the mockup of one of the blocks from one of the holiday projects. 

I had planned to start work on another Red & White Christmas decorating project now that December has started but when I pulled out the stash for it, I found I had another Bonnie pattern sitting with it.

Comparing the quilt I had planned to make to this one, I realized that since "Cherry Crunch" also calls for string blocks, it actually falls right in line with the string blocks I have to make for RRCB.  So change in plans, I'll make this one instead!  In order to make sure it's doable, I actually mapped out how many foundation string blocks I need to make each day for both projects in order to get everything done in a timely manner.  This way I'll know how much time to commit and just where or when I fall off the wagon if I don't meet those goals.   

My other mystery season project is to get my "En Provence" backing made up.  I can't do any of the actual composition work yet because the design wall is still in use for the moment.  I did pull out the fabric bin with the project scraps which is what I had planned to use to make the backing.   However when I pulled out the bag that had the quilt top in it, I found a pleasant surprise!

Reviewing my purchase notes, I had forgotten that back in 2018(!) I had caught a great deal on a light purple, pink and green print fabric (7 yards for $22!) so had switched course and had planned to use it for the backing (as of right now, the top measures a whopping 123" square**!!).  I still think I might want to piece in some scrappy bits here or there so in the coming days will let that idea marinate a bit in my mind before proceeding.

**Correction:  Back when I had measured the top using the side of my cutting mat, I had read the numbers on it the wrong way again!  The top is actually 87" square.

I'm really hoping I can stay on track and get these two to the "ready for layering and quilting stage" by the time the mystery ends in January.  Are you participating in the mystery season?  Sew along even if it's not on the actual mystery project!

1 comment:

Vireya said...

Sounds like you have a good plan, and are making progress!