Four Friends Mystery Quilt Completed

My Four Friends Mystery Quilt, pieced using Riley Blakes’ Gem Stones 2 1/2 inch strip pack and other fabrics from Sew Creative Ashland, is all done. I have to say, I’m liking it more than I did initially now that it’s quilted. And the backing, purchased from a different source, really helps make this quilt a success for in my eyes.

if you haven’t seen this quilt in a prior post, see if you can find the garden gnome, an unexpected, though welcome, visitor hiding in plain sight on the front of the quilt!

All of the quilting on this quilt is straight line, using a walking foot. I think it was definitely the right choice for this very geometric quilt.

The four quilt shops who got together to offer this mystery quilt project have joined up with another shop and they are planning a Five Friends Mystery Quilt sometime this summer. Hmm. This could be the year of mystery quilts…I have the fabric all ready to for Karen Montgomery’s “To the Point 2022 Brown Bag Mystery” starting mid March. That quilt is going to be very summery. More on that later!

Four Friends Mystery Quilt Top

Four quilt shops (the Four Friends) ran a mystery quilt in January. if you purchased a 2 1/2 in fabric strip roll from one of the shops, you could play along. I purchased my strip roll from Sew Creative Ashland, in Ashland, Oregon. They chose the yellow background and the red fabric in the little triangles for me. I added the mushroom fabric. If you look closely, you’ll find one Garden Gnome holding a mushroom, a welcome, though unexpected visitor!

We were given directions for making the chaining block and the square blocks with the strips and fold over red triangle. But it was up to us to choose our own design from these blocks.

It’s been totally amazing to see how many different configurations folks have come up with. Below are some of the incomplete designs I played with on my design wall. I ended up deciding between the star above and the large diamond.

Right now the tops are only being shared on a closed Facebook group. I hope maybe some of the shops will show them on their websites so more people can see them.

My quilt top is about 64 inches square. I decided to order a wide back fabric as the backing, and the red fabric will be my binding. It’ll be while before I get to quilting it as I had to order both the backing fabric and batting.

This has been an interesting project. It’s not one of my all time favorite quilts but still, I’m glad I did it.

I was recently given a half size strip roll and so I’m thinking about making another quilt just using the square blocks with the strips to make a quick charity quilt. I’ll let you know if I do!

Four Friends Mystery Quilt

It’s looking like 2022 is going to be the year of quilts made in steps with groups of other folks online.

The owners of 4 quilt shops, from Vermont to Oregon, got together to host a mystery quilt. The only qualification for participation was the purchase of a 2 1/2 inch strip roll from one of the four shops.

I picked this Riley Blake Gem Stones roll from Sew Creative Ashland, in Ashland Oregon, which the hometown of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. After consulting with them and giving some suggestions, I asked the staff in the shop choose my background fabric (Moda yellow Grunge) . They also picked out red Dit Dot Evolution (In the Beginning Fabrics) for a “pop” accent color (see the very top of the photo) that I’ve decided to use the red fabric as the binding for the quilt. I’m going to use the mushroom fabric from my stash as my accent.

Because I purchased this fabric roll online, I really had no idea about the fabric. I thought what I was seeing with the strips in the roll was what I was getting—subtle earth tones, each strip the color I was seeing in the roll. I was wondering if I had made too “safe” a choice.

HA!! Was I surprised when I undid the roll of strips. They are anything BUT safe or boring! At first I thought they were ombré, but then realized that they aren’t. The strips really are like chameleons. They are one color at one end of each strip, dotted with tiny diamonds of another color and then transform over the width of the strip to the color of the diamonds at the other end of the strips, with the tiny diamonds on that end, the color from the first end. There are an amazing number of gradated colors in the strip roll!

Here are just a few of the strips which I have started to sew together.

Riley Blake “Gem Stone” fabric strips

This is a mystery quilt, so I won’t know what this pattern is going to be until the last step is released at the beginning of February. Because of my choice of fabric roll, this quilt really is an adventure!

Because it’s a mystery, I can’t share the steps in as I sew them. But I will definitely be back to share this project when it’s a completed quilt top, sometime next month!