Preparing for Mysteries

I've been playing with colour choices the last couple of days.  There are two mystery quilts coming up that I want to participate in, so I went digging in my stash for some fabric for them.  The challenge is they both need fairly large pieces of fabric - 3-4 yards of certain colours - and my stash tends to be more in the 1-2 yard range.  So I pulled out the largest yardages to start with.  Basically, that boiled down to a multi-colour batik, a light green batik, a bright pink batik again, and a burgundy & cream which were originally bought for a spring mystery that I never did.

Quilt 1 is Judy's "Tell it to the Stars" - a block of the month mystery starting on Jan 1.  It needs about 3yards of 2 different fabrics, and 4 yards of background, plus some others (6 fabrics in all). This will be a challenge to pull from stash, but here are a few of my thoughts. I started with the pink, and the multicolour batiks. Found a set of 3 purples to go with - not bad, but I'm not in love with it.  I tried subbing the pink with green - eh.  So I'm still not sure about either of these groupings, and they both need a light background fabric to go with them.

There may be a shopping trip in my future - especially since the LQS whispered something about a January sale.  My last Patchwork Times mystery fabric was bought at the last Jan sale, and it worked out really well, so that may be a plan.

The other is from QTMysteryQuilts and it is a New Year's Eve mystery.  I think that means that we are going to go through the entire quilt in a single day.  Cutting directions are already out, so it's all sewing, all day on the 31st.  Only one fabric with large requirements for this one, but still a challenge to find 4 fabrics, given minimal direction.

I started with the green this time, and added a dark and light green to go with it.  Then I needed an accent colour.  I tried this blue/purple multicolour, but it didn't really sit right for me.  Thought it might be a bit better with  this orange/red print but maybe not. 

Then I noticed the burgundy set aside for the spring mystery, and pulled it into play. Much better I think, so this will likely become a quilt, although I may rethink the yellow.  It's a small yardage, so I can switch that out easily. 


I finally washed an ironed the fabric for Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice mystery.  Clue 1 is out - and clue 2 comes on Friday.  So I should get moving on this one, but I have other projects to finish first. I may start out a bit behind on this mystery, but I should be able to catch up after the 15th.

And while I was hunting down fabric for 3! new projects, I did at least finish one.  This bird of paradise was a class at the spring retreat I attended. Finally quilted it and put the binding on this week.