Mystery Quilts Gone Wild!

I was hoping for a couple more weeks of clues so I could get caught up on the sewing, but the reveal is out for the Allietare Mystery Quilt. Overall, I'm not doing too bad, I now have clues 1, 2, 3, and 5 done in both colorways, with the exception of those knocked off corners on the big rectangles in clue 5. Now that the reveal is out, I know those are part of the setting triangles, so I know they can wait a bit.

My goal for today was to get two of each block done in each colorway, and I did that, along with several more sets of clue 4, and about 2.5 rows of a baby quilt I'm using as my leader/enders right now.

Are you ready? You may need sunglasses for this...

DD#1, who chose the colors, says this reminds her of Scooby Doo, which is pretty funny, since she was never into Scooby Doo, but DD#3 was obsessed with it for a while. After thinking about how bright this quilt is becoming, and that I really wanted more purple involved, I decided I am going to use purple setting triangles, and one purple border, so the center blocks should end up "floating" in a field of purple. I think I will get this colorway into a top before I set it aside.

Now for the men's shirt colorway...

DH said this reminds him of a board game. I can see that. I'm not sure it will still remind him of that once the whole center is together.

I opted to make hourglass blocks instead of a solid center square. I'm going for lower contrast hourglass blocks, but doing that lets me use up some smaller pieces of shirt fabrics, instead of having to cut up the backs. According to my placement of colors, the setting triangles should be blue, and I might do that, or I might not. I do know I'll be using yardage for the setting triangles, I just don't care for them being mismatched. It's kind of funny I dislike mis-matched setting triangles so much, when I love scrappy quilts. I can check and see if one of the plaid shirts I have is big enough to make all the setting triangles out of. I prefer not to do stripes for setting triangles. If I use yardage, I will likely go for a solid or blender fabric.

I don't know what I'm going to do on borders. I still want to use shirts, so I'm leaning towards a piano key border, and just cut off the borders wherever they need to end. I love math, but I just don't want to do the math to figure out exact pieced borders on an on-point quilt. Since I am so unsure on which direction I want to go on this, I may very well finish the blocks and set it aside for now, or even finish the center, then set it aside without borders. Sometimes I just need to think about something for a while. 

The baby quilt I'm using as leaders/enders? Yeah, it needs to be done in three weeks. It's all equilateral triangles, and the front is pretty modern looking. The backing I'm using for it is a funky vintage Egyptian print, that I purchased at a thrift store a while back. The fabric is only 36" wide, so it's an old one, maybe 1950's??? I think it will make a fun baby quilt, and the Island of Misfit Fabrics will be missing one more print. I love putting vintage fabrics to use, instead of them just getting passed over again and again. I chose the fabrics of the front, based on the colors of the backing, so it should blend pretty well.

Of the 8 deadline quilts I have for 2016, six of them need to be done in the first half of the year, so finishing the mystery quilts right now isn't going to happen. I just want to get them to a good starting place when I pick them back up again, centers done would be good, tops done would be better. I try to never pick a good stopping place, lots of places are good stopping places. The key to actually finishing something when you have to set it aside for a while, is having it at a good STARTING place!

If you'd like to see how everyone else is doing on their mystery quilts, including a bunch that already sewn into tops, click here