Hey Quilty Friends! This past weekend every spare minute was spent working on the second clue of the Quiltville Mystery quilt called Old Town.
It took me a bit longer than some to make these units because I chose not to follow the cutting and piecing instructions. She suggested cutting and sewing strips of fabric, then subcutting into units.
Strip piecing and cutting makes things faster but I don't really care for the results. Often there will be large pieces of sewn strips leftover, the strips sets are harder to press accurately, and the top reason is I had a lot of tiny pieces in my scrap bins that I wanted to use first.
Once all my squares were cut it was pedal to the metal. I had several design boards that look like the one below. Bonnie asks that we not mention amounts and sizes of the pieces in her mystery quilts, so I'm showing only one board of blocks ready to be sewn.
What I can tell you is, so far there are hundreds of different fabrics used in the first two clues. I was hoping to only work from the scrap bins, but I ended up pulling seven blue fabrics from the stash. Sure, I could have cut more repeats from scraps, but I couldn't resist adding just a few more to the mix. By the way, your eyes are okay, I blurred the lines on the cutting mat below because Bonnie asks that we not show them. She likes to keep the sizes of everything a secret since this will eventually become a pattern in her shop.
You're probably curious about the fabric explosion on the table. Well, first off, playing with fabric is my kind of fun! And secondly, it's the best way to shuffle them for use in the quilt.
Anyway, my fabrics and just how many repeats do I have? I settled on the magic number of thirteen for fabric repeats, purely because that's how many squares I got from my first strip. Some ended up with fewer and a few with only one, no repeats.
The blocks could have been sliver trimmed to the exact size before storing but I'm not too concerned about slivers. If I find one that is way off during quilt construction, it might get trimmed.
If you are interested in joining this mystery you can find the FREE tutorial and FREE PDFs on Bonnie's blog called Quiltville. If you don't have a AD blocker on your browser, you have been warned. It's a hot mess of AD's. I don't blame her, the gal is just making money. The reason why I warn you is because I've accidently clicked on AD's trying to get the PDF. The AD's just kept popping up and moving things around. Be patient and let the page load before clicking. The link to all PDF's can be found at the top of her blog, so you should be safe with the first click on the tab called Old Town Mystery. Most of the AD's are down below the blog header.
When you get to the next page you will need to read and scroll down to find the links to all the free PDF's she has shared so far. Each Friday there will be a new PDF until all the clues are released. Save them for later if you don't plan to make it now. How many clues? We don't know! That's part of the fun. We don't know what the quilt will look like or when it will end. Normally all clues are released by the first couple of weeks of January, but you never know it might be earlier. No matter when it ends the FREE PDF's will disappear from her blog in February and will become a purchased pattern in her shop.
