A couple of weeks ago I shared some of the quilting challenges and QAL (Quit A-Long) I am taking part in. One of them was/is the Grand Central Mystery QAL from Michelle Hiatt at Sew On The Go. Friday started week 3, but I'll be honest. On Friday I had not even done clue 1, but I am happy to say that I am now over halfway through clue 3. I'm taking a break to watch the SuperBowl.
Before the challenge began, Michelle, gave us tips on choosing our fabrics. I'll be honest here, it isn't easy for me to do this without knowing the pattern. This is my first mystery quilt and I admit, I like more control than this gives me. LOL. One thing about it though, I love the colors.
This isn't my final fabric pull, but it is where I started. I also took this picture in black & white so I could check out my color values. I'm not sure it matters much for this quilt pattern, but I wanted to be sure I had some variation.
Michelle gives instructions each Friday and then a download PDF that is only available for one week. It's free, but if you miss a clue there is a small fee to get past ones. Totally worth it, if you want to do this QAL. She put so much work into it and the instructions are really well written. I'm learning a lot about pulling colors and different ways to piece my quilts. That alone is worth giving up my control of design. (sort-of) LOL
For clue one, we sew together strip sets. I sewed the first 2 together and then auditioned the 3rd ones. I'm trying to be a little more free with my fabric placement. This is something I struggle with. Anytime you see a "scrappy" style quilt from me I have re-arranged the pieces to make sure it looked just right. (in a scrappy way) Did I mention control issues?
I really liked the way these colors looked together in their strips of 3, but decided to change the pic to B&W to see if the color value placement was ok. Again, I'm not sure it matters in the final quilt, but it was worth editing the picture on my phone.
Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I did switch around the 4th strip set. It looks like 3 darks to me, so I took a medium value from one of the other sets and switched it out.
Not a big change, and possibly not noticeable. If I were being super structured I would make all 3 strips have different values, I would rip out seems so I could better arrange the pieces, but in the end that is not the point of this quilt.
From there I used the triangle wedge star ruler to cut my strips into triangles following the directions in the download for Clue #1
And this is one of each. hmmm... Who knows what it will become. The directions also had us cutting a set of half square triangles. For now I am keeping each of the finished clue pieces in Gallon ZipLoc bags. I'm sure there is a better way, but it keeps them safe and together for now.
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