Twice the Mystery

I've done Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts for years now. I've often heard of women doing two different colorways at once, and thought they were a little nuts. Well, I've joined them, and I'm doing two colorways this year. Whether both will end up full-sized versions is still undecided, but we'll see.

My daughter (DD#1) who lives in South Africa chose both colorways, with a few stipulations from me.

I wanted to use men's shirts for one colorway. She was debating between yellow and tan, and I substituted a constant gold. I am substituting the colors as follows

Bonnie's neutral = white
Bonnie's red = blue
Bonnie's black = red
Bonnie's grey = gold
Bonnie's gold = green

So, for clue one, instead of neutrals and grey, I was using neutrals and gold.

 I have 200 done so far, with the rest cut and ready to sew.

For colorway #2, I wanted to use a purple background. It really doesn't photograph well, but it is purple, not blue.

My substitutions are as follows

Bonnie's neutral = purple
Bonnie's red = lime green
Bonnie's black = pink
Bonnie's grey = yellow
Bonnie's gold = orange

So, my clue one colors are purple and yellow.

Again, there are 200 done, and the rest are cut and ready to go.

I am really glad I took the time to straighten up my scrap user system before the mystery started. They were a mess from pulling from them all the time, and now they are sorted, and I can pull from the strip drawers first, and use yardage to fill in any colors not plentiful in the scrap user system.

I am working on sewing Christmas gifts too, so I have no plans to keep up. Bonnie always makes the first clue an easy one, so I would imagine I can finish all of clue one before clue two comes out. I am dividing my time by working on Christmas gifts during the day, and working on the mystery at night. Friday daytime I did pull strips from my strip drawers, and Friday evening I got out my Easy Angle ruler and cut all of one colorway, while I cut the other colorway Saturday night. Sunday afternoon, after spending all morning on Christmas sewing, I spent two hours sewing, and got 400 HST's sewn up. They go pretty fast when they are already paired up before you cut.

I chain pressed short chains of HST's, then cut them apart and cut off the dog ears while watching a comedy show with DD#2. If I can find the time to finish up clue one this week, I will, if not, it's fine, I already made more of unit one than I thought I'd get done right now.

I'm not pressuring myself to have each clue done before the next comes out. I have lots of Christmas sewing to do, along with lots of other holiday related things to do. The thing is, I like the mysteries during the holidays. It gives me an excuse to carve out some time for me, and something I want to do. It's easy to kind of lose yourself during the holiday rush. The mystery quilts give me more to do, yes, but since quilting is my sanity time, it also helps keep me grounded.

On clue one, I cut enough for the full-sized quilt, but whether I continue to do that or not remains to be seen. HST's I can always use, so I had no qualms about cutting for the full sized quilt, even though I might do smaller versions. I'm just taking it one clue at a time, and I'll decide as I go. If I cut for the full sized quilt for every clue, the mystery quilts could always be leader/ender projects for next year.

If you'd like to see how other people are doing on the mystery, check it out here.