Jmoore- your grandson is absolutely gorgeous! (or handsome haha)
I just returned from DC with my granddaughter and missed her the whole way home. She's smiling now and I'm freezing that sweet face in my memory until Christmas. We had some serious "girl talk". :)

I plan on starting today!!! Looking forward to it. I appreciate all the posters who urged me on!!

wildyard, this is just a little bit of your total "red" fabrics

The Ringo mystery was basically aqua/pink/neutral, so I chose red/white/blue from my reproduction pile. I quit buying fabric in 2001 and have worked from stash since, so my mystery quilts are based on what I think I have enough of ;)

This year's mystery is basically 5 colors, so I'll just choose 5 of what I have in my 30's pile, which will have nothing to do with bluebonnets really.

Just use what you need to use to get the right number.....most likely the color will be used again in another step and you want to have some uncut for that step as it might be a different size. I usually try to mix up my reds...etc. but you get to decide! If I remember right, Bonnie usually says...that is all for the red....when she is done with that color...but I can't remember if that is always true....Have fun....for the first time....I am using just yardage as I had enough at hand and I am using my stash...already though I am tempted to throw in some variety! I love scrappy quilts....

grr no....so want to....but I told myself I could not start until I got the quilt I have on the longarm done...just doing an all over design, and add the borders to my judy nymier quilt....so want to start....I just may have to break my own rules....so far the blizzard we are supposed to be waiting for hasnt happened....I was planning on being snowed in all weekend!

I am not one for mystery quilts but I sure enjoy lurking on this forum and watching what everyone does and how different the quilts look with the same pattern and so many different colors of fabrics.

Thanks Kalama, it's fantasitic.

Wildyard, you never know if it's all or not. The only way to make certain is to make the usual amount and then see if it takes up everything. I think in the past, she has said if it is all of something. But there is never a guarantee. The perfect thing about scrappies are that you can always add more if you run short. It rarely stands out.

need to finish a few things b4 I start but excited to see

This is always an interesting question (you can certainly ask about it on the Facebook page). I really like the idea of using some fabrics in the color group for one clue and others for another clue, because that should make it easier to avoid repeating fabrics in a block. The difficulty is, we don't know how many clues there will be using each color, and I wouldn't want to leave some fabrics out and then not get a chance to use them. For this clue, I used all of my reds and medium blues because I have fewer of those, but used only the dark blues that I thought looked best with the other two colors, as I have more dark blues.

Last year I used different groups of neutrals for each clue and that worked out well.

I'm really intrigued by these 4-patches. It seems like an unusual color combination and reminds me of berries in a bowl.

I had kind of a shock -- I decided to measure my strip sets along the length and found that my pressing was atrocious. The first batch I measured were all very bowed out in the middle on the red side. Fortunately, I was able to fix them by repressing and using more pressure in the middle of the strip. I had no idea I had this pressing habit. Unfortunately, I forgot to check the second batch, but I was conscious of the issue then, so hopefully I did a better job. I have them all cut and pinned, so hope to finish up today.

Wildyard, the way I took the instructions was that I just cut enough strips to do this step and didn't concern myself overly with how many fabrics I wanted to use. I am cutting my strips in width such that it makes dividing the number of needed units easily and works well with the odd shaped pieces I have... With my collection of fabric it happens with the reds that it meant basically one cut from each piece, if I had full width of yardage I'd use less. In comparison, I barely touched my darks and used maybe half of my mediums in this step. I never reduced my available yardage to the required yardage and expect to use maybe half of what I prepared.

One thing I was aware of from the beginning is that the scale of pieces Bonnie uses means that my hand dyed fabric will mostly read as solid by the time it is cut down -- and that's true with step one. Although I can tell/recognize that 10 different reds were used, it "looks" more like 3 and I'm trying to keep out squares that read as yellow since that is my version of neutral.

I really like how she doubles the cutting. I felt I could get more variety the way I normally do things but as it turns out, it's pretty much meaningless effort since the mottled small pieces turn out so similarly and mostly what you see is some version of superman's cape to black/red. Am considering fully following the directions next time as this time I just increased my effort without results -- I think anyway.

Edit: Joe's Mom, I too am already not very happy with my cutting and piecing. For me these are tiny little widths, I usually don't cut below 2.5", but the reality is that is just an excuse and all we really should be concerned with is the accurate cutting and that darn 1/4", no matter how much or little is on the other side of the seam. Again, it will be a good skill builder for me because my usual style is pretty fast and loose, but you can do that with larger pieces. I am wishing I had my Bernina working (maybe I'll see if it decides to play today, since it decided not to sew correctly randomly maybe it will turn on and work fine!) or maybe I'll set up my trusty vintage machine instead of the cheapo Brother I'm using.

Don't know if I mentioned, but the car repair came in under estimate! Still expensive but I should still have budget for the Bernina servicing. Feels good to have the opportunity to drive myself, but with all the sewing I haven't bothered to do any yet :p