Mystery Season

 Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, Indigo Way, has started. I'm attempting two colorways this year, one full size of my own color choices, one smaller version with Bonnie's colors, but only using men's shirts.

This is clue one in my colorway. The lilac is my neutral, the teal my indigo. Not all my sets are shown here. 

Here's some of the clue one with men's shirts. When going for a smaller size, you never really know how many units to make. I'm doing over half, hoping to have enough units to make a cohesive pattern and extra units will just go into something else. Bonnie's colors really worked my men shirt stash, so I'm opting to do two quilts this year. I made two Allietare too, one my colorway, one men's shirts. That was a while ago though. 

I'm also still working on the Viking murder mystery quilt. 

I left the first and last inch of the bias tape loose so I could match up whatever may need to be matched in the final layout. I've managed to keep up with all the months this year, always finishing the blocks before the next one came out. That's much easier to accomplish with a BOM mystery than Bonnie Hunter's one clue per week. 

I happen to know I'm getting next year's murder mystery as a Christmas present. 2024 will be Murder in Greece. One thing I can say about the quilt murder mysteries, is the facebook clue crew is easily the nicest online quilting group I've ever been in, and I've been in a lot of them. I've been in Yahoo quilting groups, IO quilting groups, multiple facebook quilting groups, and the murder mystery quilters are the nicest. No quilt police, only encouraging words, no comments making anyone feel bad about how their block came out and lots of help for the new or inexperienced quilters. You can only join the clue crews if you sign up for the mystery quilt, so it's not open to everyone.  I've already made my guess on who I think the killer is, and I'm hoping I'm right, even though I'm not thinking I'll win the prize even if I am right. 

I'm always working on so many quilts at once, you may question my participation in the mysteries. I debated not doing anymore for a while, but the thing is, mystery quilts are projects I do just because I want to, I do them for me. I may or may not keep the quilts when they are finished, but the making of them is just for my own enjoyment. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in making quilts for gifting, or quilting for charities, that I lose sight of the fact that I quilt because I enjoy it. Mystery quilts remind me that I should be enjoying the process, enjoying the journey, and not be so focused on the productivity aspect. I need the reminder, maybe some of you do too.