Mystery Quilt - Reveal

What an excellent way to spend a Saturday. I am always elated when I get to spend my day dedicated to sewing. Even better when you get to do this in the company of others.

Our Mystery quilt day went from 9AM- 5PM. The MQ was put on by one of our local guilds and  was held at our local town museum. For those who joined us from the city some were shocked we even had a museum ha ha. Honestly whats a hometown without a little museum =D

I can sum up the day into a few words ... Laughter ... Coffee ... and Surprise.

B all set up and ready to put the pedal to the metal!

Me putting the finishing touches on my set up.

I think I brought my entire sewing room with me!

Mom and C attentively listening to the 1st set of instructions.

We had 11 great ladies creating quilts and 5 eager pressers.

AND WERE OFF ... LISTENING TO THE HUM OF THE MACHINES 

Okay so we all figured there would be some sort of 4 patch... but the colour combination? 

This wasn't entirely what I expected. I assumed 2 Blue & 2 Orange 

Back to the drawing board to come up with a new guess.

FIRST BLOCKS

The Youngest 

(mine)

B's 

(♥ the colours)

 Quilting Momma's 

 (what an impact)

Sashing, Sashing and more Sashing

All the ladies sewing away, trying to get their sashing done.

I felt like we were in a race. This was one of the last steps before we got to lay out the pattern. 

We were so close to reaching the precipice of completion.

The anticipation was really building now.

We made it ... the final blocks were getting chain pieced together !!!

NOW TO LAYOUT THE QUILT

I have to say right now, the 4 of us ladies tried to guess the pattern based off of the cutting instructions and all of us were 100% wrong!!! This was truly a surprise.

That border ... WOW

 "Simply Cool" by Pleasant Valley Creations

...

Mystery Quilt Pattern

We got to see the finished quilt up close.

This was Michelle's quilt, she was one of the organizers of the MQ!

 MYSTERY QUILT REVEAL

The Youngest 

Quilting Momma's 

 C's

B's

I had a blast creating this Mystery Quilt. I am overjoyed that I was able to participate and cannot thank the Guild enough for putting on this event. 

What a huge amount of work it is for them; planning, organizing, PRESSING!

The amount of pressing is unfathomable, there is no way we could have gotten anywhere close to finishing without those pressers.  THANK YOU...THANK YOU...THANK YOU  

My husband even told me when I got home that this was one of his favourite quilts I have made. 

Kudos ladies, we have another winner of quilt on our hands.

 Until Next Time

- They Youngest-

Mystery Quilt - Sneak Peek

This weekend coming up a few of us ladies are participating in a sew day where we will be putting together a Mystery Quilt.

Two of the ladies participating are new to quilting and joined us for our Irish Chain Class a few months back. One is my Moms good friend C and the other is my best Friend B. 

Check us out below after a long day of cutting fabric for the Mystery Quilt 

What is a Mystery Quilt you ask, well its actually a great idea. You simply create a series of quilt blocks without knowing what the final pattern will be. The fantastic ladies running the Mystery Quilt day lead you though the instructions and techniques needed to make the Mystery Quilt. They are also an excellent resource and help when it comes to making your fabric selections.

Trust me its harder than you would think to pick fabrics when you don't know what the final quilt will look like, especially for a "Type A" person like myself.  All in all I am so happy with my final fabric selections. (Thanks Michelle for all the help!)

MYSTERY QUILT - FABRIC SELECTIONS

Quilt #1  [The Youngest] 

 Quilt #2 [B's Selection] 

Quilt #3  [C's Selection] 

Quilt #4  [Quilting Momma] 

"Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise."

Julia Cameron

Until Next Time

- The Youngest -

Mystery Quilts Reveal

A couple of months ago, the Youngest and myself went to a Mystery Quilt Day! For those of you new to Mystery Quilts -- you get the instructions in bits and pieces. The best are the ones that you have no inkling of what they look like!

Until.......

It all started with the cutting instructions! The Youngest had her choice of colors and her base fabric is what you can see on the right for the borders. This is a closeup of the borders and backing:

Imagine that beautiful floral in her stash! She says she found it at Fabricland! Absolutely gorgeous! The rest of the fabric she bought at My Sewing Room. I went with her as her "bolt holder" haha, as we wandered the bolts of fabrics for just the right choices! Remember, you have NO idea what the outcome is going to be, but she really liked the combination of the ranges of yellow and blues to tie into that beautiful floral!

As for mine, I had some great fabric for the borders as well! I was hoping to go red and green, but was outvoted by Chef and The Youngest! They were both choosing fabrics from my stash and also went with the yellows and blues! This quilt is for Chef's Youngest!

With our cutting instructions in hand, we cut and separated the different pieces into baggies labelled, "A", "B", "C", etc.

When we arrived to sew, were would be given more clues. The first hour would have us sewing one piece from bag "A", to another piece in bag "C". The day continued like that as our blocks came together! I am so glad that I didn't know what the finished quilt looked like as I am sure I would have picked out different fabric! Besides, I got to use fabric from my stash and I only had to buy backing fabric!

Here are the backs to our quilts! I love how The Youngest put one stripe of that gorgeous floral off-set to one side!

I found the backing to my fabric from Connecting Threads. The total for the back was $20! You can't beat that! The quilts are totally reversible, so if you are having a day where you want it a bit "quieter" you can always flip it over!

These are the fronts! Mine first and then The Youngest's.

75x75 approx

 75x75 approx

With this weekend being the long weekend, I sat with my meds on a side table along with boxes of tissues, constant fluids and the quilt on my lap while I hand stitched the binding to the back. The Youngest had finished hers long ago, but Tuesday they are both being delivered to Heritage Park Quilt Festival! The above quilt is The Youngest's second quilt in the Festival! I am so very happy that she likes quilting!

As for Chef and the Youngest, a hearty thank you for digging through my stash for Chef's Youngest's quilt! It turned out great! All that's left are labels for both and they will be ready for delivery!

I'll leave you with a few more photo's!

Happy Quilting Everyone!
In anticipation of Canada's holiday tomorrow - Happy Victoria Day!

Margo

Another Mystery!

Don't you just love surprises? The Youngest and I went to a Mystery Quilt day with Nimble Thimbles Quilt Club out in Airdrie! Never participated in a Mystery Day? Well neither did I until I went to my first one last year! Of course you have read about these on various blogs, but doing one in RL (real life) is a whole lot of fun! Just check out how happy we were!
Before our trip, we got our first "clue".... ok, they were instructions on the type of fabric and how to cut them up.We placed them on our labeled bags and then brought them to class!

The first clue was read out and we started to sew our faces off! 

We had help from a wonderful group of ladies (in the aprons) who helped "un-sew" and also press our pieces!

Because I am such a hands-on type learner (I don't do well with verbal instructions! haha!) 

My quilting friend Karen (yes, the one and only one who quilts my lovely creations)

 helped to un-sew my boo boo's! (Thanks Karen!)

We had NO idea of what our creation  would end up looking like -- even after a few more "clues"

until..we ended up

 with full blocks!

So my "Shambhala" quilt is on it's way! I'll post it once it is quilted and bound!

 It's definitely a HAPPY quilt!

We had a wonderful time! It's so great to see  how things comes to life bit by bit! It was great to share this day with so many great ladies! Hope you all have a chance to do this one day! Remember there are a lot of great "Mystery" quilts you can participate in on-line -- don't wait for it to come to you, check them out and take a chance! So much thing to see what wonderful creations there are out there! Bonnie Hunter has a new one -- check it out! http://quiltville.blogspot.ca/2014/10/surprise-quiltville-winter-mystery.html  You can still get in on it! The fabric and cutting instructions just came out!

Happy Quilting everyone!

Margo