paintmejudy

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our ninth mystery quilt train ride! This is a scrappy top that will measure about 40” x 54” – you decide if you want to make more blocks to make it bigger, or add borders of your choice. You can make a queen or king sized quilts by making four or ix times the number of blocks. Clue one is today, Feb. 7th and clue 3, last clue, will be on Feb. 21ast. This is just a quickie to try and clean out some scraps.

If you are leery of scrappy quilts, I do hope you will try one. There are quite a few scrappy converts on these train rides. Or take a look at the next couple week’s clues and you will see how you can do a controlled scrappy, or a traditional quilt using some yardage of a few fabrics. All quilters are welcome, confident beginners and experienced quilters alike, and we love when we have new riders jump on the train. The club car is open, and coffee and tea are waiting for you to have a meet and greet. All riders from mystery #8 are finished with their quilts, right? No? Well, doesn’t matter, you can start another one today. So let’s get started.

As always, accurate ¼” seams are a must in order for everything to fit together correctly, and all seams in this quilt are ¼”.

This quilt will yell out begging you to choose an 18-20” piece of dark fabric (and another 8” if you also wish to use this as a sashing). This dark fabric should be something you will not use in creating the rest of the blocks, either a tone on tone, teeny tiny print or solid for this step. I chose a dark purple tone on tone for this step and will call it the “dark constant”. From your dark constant piece, cut at least five 2-1/2” strips WOF. It depends on how many tiny pieces you are patching onto your dark constant. Set aside the rest to use later.

Now, gather some light 2-1/2” wide pieces or strips. I know I had a lot of you use up your light stash of scraps, so go as light, medium light or pale as you can. From now on, all I will call these will be “lights” but you can use light, pale, medium light, tone on tone, tiny indistinct light prints. Don’t forget you can use the wrong side of a fabric you think may be too bright or dark. I have used an assortment of neutrals. I only had 9 lights so there are duplicates. Or if you have a big piece about 16” ” you can use the same -- light or medium light small print, nothing too dramatic or dark. Your light fabric needs to be a width of 2-1/2” and can be as small as 3 “ to use up the tiny pieces. See the picture where I showed how I used small pieces with minimum waste of your dark constant. Those small segments should be multiples of 2-1/2” long with a bit of extra for squaring up your block. Sew the dark constant and the lights right sides together, press – your strip must be 4-1/2” wide – then cut into 2-1/2” wide segments. Make 24 four-patch blocks that will measure 4-1/2” square. Quadruple the quantity and make 96 four-patch blocks if you want to end up with something that would be big enough for a queen bed. You can decide on what border you want to add when you are finished.

Next week you will need some more lights and I used brights. You will not need anymore light 2-1/2" srips -- bigger pieces will be needed.