Stitching a Mystery

I love a good mystery, so when a friend of mine told me about Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt, I decided to give it a try. I'd never heard of a mystery quilt before -- and I'm pretty new to the mysteries of quilting. But basically, each Friday Bonnie Hunter posts a piece of the pattern and we all piece like crazy. There is a linky list where people can post their progress.

We are now in week 2. The first week, I managed to put together a few blocks. I'm deviating a little from the suggested color scheme by using a "black" that is really pretty colorful. My quilt is going to have a Mardi Gras feel to it -- in keeping with the New Orleans setting of most of the Dime Store Novel series. The constant yellow is a really awesome angel design, which I chose so that the quilt would have a little of my mother in it. She collected angels and would have loved this fabric.

Some of the squares need to be trimmed. I didn't realize there was a difference between the OmniGrid and the Easy Angle ruler, so there is excess fabric. Lesson #1.

I found the week 2 blocks easier. I used the No Waste method, so I will have a bunch of small blocks left over for some future project. I also learned a new technique, so this week was a double-win.

I've got 20 or so of these done, all using the musical note neutral. The others will use different neutrals...some are musical some not.  Once again, I got daring on the blacks and used some neon skeletons and dragons, as well as the Mardis Gras masks.

I'm having a good time exploring a mystery in color and line instead of character and plot. The stories are distilling and their mysteries will emerge when they are ready. Meanwhile, I'll post my progress on the mystery quilt throughout the month of December and into January...and some day...I'll post my end result.

If you are interested in seeing what other quilters are creating for the mystery quilt, you can take a trip along this week's mystery quilt link party. I took a peek and there are a lot of fun designs.