The sails in my guild quilt project caught a different breeze and I deliberately veered off in a different direction from the pattern, “Regatta”, a Mystery Quilt Pattern by Merry Meyhem in several steps. “Off Course” by choice!

I’d been sailing against the wind from the beginning due to having a directional fabric as one of the light blue backgrounds. It has seagulls flying in it and the way I cut them, the seagulls would have been flying vertically had I followed the pattern. I flipped the direction the half square triangle sails were facing which solved that problem. It did complicate sewing the blocks together because the blocks in each strips were the mirror image of the pattern.

I”d also taken a guess about the border on the final layout when I was purchasing my fabric. I took a risk and purchased the royal blue instead of sticking with the light blues in the quilt’s background. So I knew from the start that my border was going to be different. It’s actually completely different from the borders in the pattern.

My border, with boats sailing across it, made my finished quilt is a bit smaller than the quilt in the pattern. And I needed it to be smaller. I had one piece of batting left from a roll, and it was just big enough for the quilt I made, which saved me from needing to by a new batting.

Here’s the back. This is “Sea Breeze” from Hoffman Fabrics “Shoreline Stories” collection. The fabric is a standard 42-44” width so I used the left over light blues from the quilt’s background to just squeak out a back that was wide enough.

I love this quilt. But if you are looking for a sneak peak to see what the finished “Regatta” Mystery Quilt looks like, this is NOT it! I used most of the pattern’s instructions, but the actual finished mystery quilt is a definitely a different day at the yacht club!

I think a certain Springer Spaniel is chuckling about all of this!

To see more about this Mystery Quilt which has been a project our quilt guild has been working on all year, check out my February 11, 2021 post. If you are working on this mystery quilt, or are interested in purchasing it, I hope you have fun making it. It’s not difficult at all…if your follow Merry Mayhem’s direction and don’t veer off course like I did. ( Don’t by fabrics with a directional prints for your background! Half square triangles just don’t play well with directional fabrics).