Joy's Mystery Quilt

Back in May one of my quilting friends on Facebook started a group to make a mystery quilt just to give us some fun during the quarantine. I decided to go ahead and join the group since it was for a scrap bin project and I had two overflowing scrap bins. Well I made all of the blocks she had in the mystery, but in the end I decided to just mess around with the blocks and see what else I could come up with. My final setting is not the mystery but I did use all the blocks, with no extra nor did I have to make any more than she asked for........a real win. I used a bunch of scraps and had fun. I kinda put this on hold when I started working on the tree of life applique border. Now that that is done I pulled this back out yesterday morning and started playing.

I have leftover leaves from the tree of life project. I also found some flower buds from another applique project. The flower template is from a round robin I did years ago for someone's quilt (I think it was Linda Hoo). The vine in the photo is leftover from another project and it is too dark so I will use a different fabric. I found a couple of butterflys I had cut out and am going to use them. I also love the birds I did on the tree of life project so I am going to make two more. The good thing is this is a lot less applique than the tree of life so it will not take as long to get it done. Each corner will have the flowers, vine and leaves. The top and bottom will have a bird and a butterfly. At least that is the plan right now.

This plan is close to the one I made but it needed a few more blocks to be made and it was also a bit to tall and narrow. 

I really love this idea with the string blocks and may use it in a future project. Again this setting I needed to make more of the string blocks and I had leftover fourpatches.

These are my blocks after clue 2. I just laid them out and do love the string blocks. I have decided that I like the idea of taking the string blocks and adding a plain fabric to half of them as we were instructed to do in clue 3. (Sorry no photos.........I lost some of the photos I took of the early steps of the mystery including some other alternate setting I played around with) This made 60 blocks out of the 30 string blocks without a huge amount of extra effort...........love that technique!

Here are my clue 1 fourpatches. Not very exciting but I did use quite a lot of scraps to make these 32 blocks. They finish at 5" a good size. Aside from the blue triangles in the center star all of the fabrics for this quilt came from my scraps...........well ok I did cut a few from yardage but not that many.

New Personal Record

I finally got in full gear a couple of months ago with quilting and sewing. I had been putting off making the bias strip for this project for months. I had cut the straps 5/8" wide.....yup crazy. Well one day I decided to tackle this a couple of months ago and got it done. I made one very, very long strip. It was many yards long.  The next day I basted the main strip to the drawn line on the quilt. Then another few days to cut out a million leaves. Then I was off and running. I think I started the applique on June 12th. I have only missed working on this about three days since. I just designed a section at a time and tried to do at least 5 leaves each day. This is a new record for me to finish a project of this magnitude. It was a great distraction from the rest of the insanity going on in the world around me.

I am really happy with the squirrels. I think they add a little fun. This little guy is scampering down the vine.

A bluebird at the bottom, just hanging out.

I think this squirrel is my favorite. He was also the hardest to do. I just love how he came out. 

Around The Last Corner

This project has been my focus for the past month. Once I got the vine figured out I really got excited to see this come together. I kinda set myself some hard and fast goals for this and that was to applique at least 5 leaves a day. I have actually exceeded that goal. There was a week spent figuring out the squirrels and I am very pleased with them. So now that I have finally gone around the final corner it is time to get the two birds done and figure out the last part of the vine and leaves on the top center. There will be a few more branches around that top bird.

The bottom bluebird just needs to be made and plopped down in the center and he is good to go.

This one is a mountain bluebird. Yes I just spent some time online finding images of birds I liked and then just drew my own version that would be easy to applique. I actually did these birds in the very beginning and they have been waiting patiently in the wings for their turn to come front and center in this project.

So here are the final plans for these little birds. The line art is ready to be cut apart and the fabrics are selected. This will be the focus this week to get them done and hopefully also the last group of vines and leaves. So far I am pretty pleased at how this project has come together.