Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Mystery Quilts part 2

There have been times when I hit what I like to call a dead spot in my quilting. I just don’t feel like working on anything I have started and I am not excited about starting something new. This is the best time for me to start a mystery. It gives me a challenge. A challenge to pull the correct fabrics, and the suspense of seeing where I am going with this quilt. It brings the excitement back into quilting.

The Bartered Quilt Mystery is probably the most basic mystery pattern that I have done. It is also my biggest disappointment! What was I thinking? When I pulled those fabrics? And you know what is even scarier? I hand quilted it. I learned a valuable lesson on this one. I used a busy background and it would have been much more pleasing if I had chosen a tone on tone for the background.

Frenz was a mystery gone bad that I tried to fix with a clever border. An online group (Frenz) I was on at the time did this 4 block center as a mystery. It called for 2 fabrics. I thought by using fabrics from my stash in the same color family I could get the same results. Unfortunately I lost the star design in the process. What could have turned out as another great 4 block quilt instead ended up as a big mish mash of nothingness. I did have fun piecing the letters.

The fairy quilt had a fabric miscalculation (my mistake) that I feel made this a better quilt. This mystery was in a magazine over a 3 month period of time. I bought fabrics specifically for this quilt since it was to be based on a theme fabric for the border. I went with the Flower Fairy fabrics since it was also to be my daughter’s age 9 quilt (another story for another time). I purchased all the fabrics together out of this line and didn’t realize until I went to cut it out that I had flipped the background and medium fabric requirements around. Now I no longer had a white background. But I like how the pink turned out and call it a happy mistake.

5 comments:

heather said...

I like the patterns! The first quilt pattern would make a great quick gift quilt.

Darcie said...

Great mystery quilt pics, Laura! I especially love your daughter's Fairy one. I think maybe a fairy was helping you out with this happy mistake, don't you!

Tonya Ricucci said...

I think I like your Frenz quilt more than you do - think you did a great job with the colors. And love the border too, of course.

Finn said...

Thanks for sharing them Laura, it's hard sometimes to "put what doesn't work out there" for people to see. Seems like all it takes is one miscalculation or decision on those mysteries..but then sometimes that's what makes them special and interesting.

Quilts And Pieces said...

You know what Laura, I like Frenz. The star design maybe doesn't pop out like it was suppose to, but I like the folky scrappy feel of it. And you know what - the white for the stars really makes the stars shine!