Prepping - Laundry Basket Quilts Mystery Quilt 2021
I had first heard the idea of “Mystery Quilts” on a Missouri Start Quilt Company video. Jenny Doan had participated in one on New Year’s Day where they got the supplies and then every hour or so, they’d get the pattern for the block (material list was sent out early, but that’s all participants knew before had). It wasn’t until the end of the day, they got the final pattern and result. The idea intrigued me - so began my search of Mystery Quilts.
And let me tell you, the search results for “Mystery Quilt” are not very fruitful and hashtags leave something to be desired.
New Year’s Eve Mystery Quilt, Mystery Quilt, Mystery Quilt Pattern, New Year’s Day Mystery Quilt, and so on and so forth. I found a few on Fat Quarter Shop, but nothing that was like what I was wanting to try. Or, if I got a decent hit, the websites I got directed to looked like they were built in the 1980’s or required signing up for a private Facebook group. Anyway, most seemed to have already occurred. I’d given up on my search, thinking I’d try again closer to New Year’s and see if I got better results.
As you know, I learned about Block Party at my local quilt store, Prairie Point Quilts & Fabric and signed up for that. But then, in my YouTube feed, a Mystery Block #1 video from Editya Sitar showed up in my feed.
It looked classy, elegant, and I recognized Editya from, you guessed yet, Missouri Star videos. The video was short (under 10 minutes), so I clicked the link…and I was in love. This was everything I wanted!
Right now, Editya has two mystery quilts; one from 2020 and one from 2021 (scroll all the way to the bottom for 2020’s!). According to her Quilting Window from November 19th, she’s hoping to do a Mystery Quilt in February 2022 (it’s already on my calendar!). I settled on her 2021 quilt and went and tried to find some material close to what she had as I loved the blue and white color way. I also became intrigued with how the quilt was put together with basic blocks; this is something I want to learn more about as I begin to design more of my own quilts. And, it was free.
Next, it was off to find some material - I was tempted to go to Editya’s site and order right from her, but I had an itch to start the quilt, so I went shopping and found the Regency Somerset Blues by Christopher Wilson Tate for Moda.
Now, you may have noticed, the line has some yellow in it and Editya did a blue-and-white and multi-color version. Now, the benefit of doing a Mystery Quilt AFTER the sew-a-long is that you know the layout. Since I’d need to plan out where I’d use each color, I took a screenshot of the finished quilt and converted it to black and white. Then, I found some markers that represented the colors in the line I picked. This let me make sure that when I picked the colors for the blocks, I’d have some guidance for what I needed to use. I also don’t want to run out, so I could plan out for the colors I had less of and so on.
Based on the initial color, the result is stunning! I can’t wait to put this together. Now, Editya did the sew-a-long one block a day, so approximately two weeks. My goal is to put together one block a week (you know, I’ve got a lot I like to work on at the same time; can’t tie me down to one quilt!) and show you all the end result, what I learned, and things I did a different way.
