Mystery Quilt Solved!

I am happy to report that my mystery "quilt-in-a-box" is finished!

For those of you who don't know what a mystery quilt is, I will try to explain.  First you are given a vague set of fabric requirements to accumulate and cut.  Then about once a month, for maybe 5 or 6 months, you are given a step to do with some of the pieces, sewing them together to create bigger pieces.  After several months of what seems like random piecing, the final way to put your pieces together is revealed.

Charlotte Hawkes (scrapitudequilts.com) presented this mystery through her blog (Scrap-in-a-box Mystery). My friend Alice and I followed Charlotte's instructions and each of us worked on our own quilt and frequently compared our progress.   Of course, Alice finished her quilt a couple months ago... she is very good at getting things done.  I'm a bit slower.

Charlotte's mystery quilts are "scrap quilts," where you basically use small leftover pieces from other projects for the majority of the quilt.  So I decided to use batiks, as I had a number of batik scraps, quite a few 5 inch charm squares of batiks I had received as a gift, and access to Alice's bag of batik scraps.  In addition to the many "scraps" we had to select a "neutral" (I used a beige batik) and a "blender" (I selected a yellow batik).  I tried to mix up my scraps as much as possible, but I tried to avoid blue.

When the first set of directions had us cutting very small squares into triangles, I might have quit right then and there.  But there is something motivating about having a friend nudging you on each step of the way.  And it's particularly rewarding when the mystery is solved and you end up with such a pretty quilt!

Charlotte suggested waiting until we knew how the blocks would go together before selecting our setting and border fabrics and I think that was good advice.  I'm happy with my orange and green which I think blend well with all of the other bursts of color throughout the quilt.

I've flipped over a corner so that you can see the backing fabric I chose.  It's also a batik with shades of green and orange.

And one last picture to give you an idea of size.  It's folded in half and draped over the couch... a very generous lap quilt... big enough to spread over the whole couch and certainly big enough to wrap up in!

Now to be honest, when I was sewing those little triangles together, I probably did a bit of whining.  And more than once I wondered if all of those tricky bias edges would create so much distortion that I wouldn't end up with a usable quilt top.  But somehow it all came together... not perfect... but pretty darn nice!

Now I'm ready for the next mystery, Charlotte!