Scrap Dance Two-Step Mystery Quilt Along

Ok…I caved….I have to “play along” with Carole !! Check out her latest  Scrap Dance Two-Step Mystery Quilt Along !

I like this one because it will last over a period of 6 or 7 MONTHS; not weeks; and I can fit it “in between” other projects!  Carole writes really great instructions; and she gives you ALL your cutting info up front.

I am going scrappy (of course)!  I read thru the blog post, and printed out the PDF file. THANKS CAROLE for giving us a “down & dirty – 1 page” PDF!

I got out my “Scrap Storage System 2.5” strip bin and selected my medium and darks for the first  step.  I did pull yardage for the background as suggested by Carole. (Note…stole it out of my Bonnie Hunter project bin…..shhh….). (Bonnie would be happy I’m sure to know that I am using my scraps that were “ready to go” from her storage system).  I made a “few extra” of the first step; just so I can have some choices later at assembly point.    I tried to get a bit of a variety in these pieces.

Once step 1 was cut, stitched and pressed “to the dark” , I pulled out my bin of 5″ squares, and made those selections. When it came to the 5 3/4″ pieces; I took a pause.  I have a bin with some 6″ strips (left over border pieces etc); and went ahead and cut the required number of blocks, but left them at 6″.  I will “trim to 5 3/4” later….depending on how they are used.    Now, the 4.5″ squares are not something I have readily available, so I cut down some 5″ squares to the required size.  (You won’t get to see any of these until they get used in a future step! And I may swap a few pieces out.)

I am holding off on cutting the background fabrics until the next round of instructions.  I have tucked away nearly a yard of background fabric in my container with the other blocks/squares.  This day felt like a giant zip-lock kind of day, so instructions, step 1 sewn blocks and cut blocks are all in a bag, ready to roll on Step 2 in February!  (Did I mention I am doing the throw size this time?  Enough with the craziness of king size mystery quilts still hanging around to be quilted!)

If you are interested in “playing along” then hop over to Carole’s blog -From My Carolina Home.  If you are reading on my page, there is a button to the mystery on the sidebar of the page.

Speaking of Carole’s blog…..you might remember last fall she did the Autumn Jubilee pattern and I got busy making lots of maple leaves and pumpkins.  I have been hooked on them, and decided I wanted a “reversible” table runner to keep.  This week, I had a “sit & sew’ with one of my quilt bees.  It was easy to “grab the Autumn Jubilee bin” and take it along!  I had the “Christmas side” of the table runner finished, and was surprised when I opened my Autumn bin to find more blocks completed than I remembered.  I finished this up yesterday afternoon.

I’m sure it looks very familiar.  The Christmas side is the same fabric and pattern I made in November.  I have a lot of that fabric, and I had a lot of the parts for the blocks already cut, ready to assemble.  The Autumn side I changed the orientation of the leaves and skipped the pumpkins-

No pumpkins on this side!  I previously used this leaf layout to make a placemat, and I like it quite a bit.  There will be more placemats in the coming months.  The placemats may become my “sit & sew” take along project.  I will probably need to dig out the original placemat for sizing!  I quilted this table runner across the width of the placemat using built in quilting stitches on my  Janome.  I think I killed my walking foot tho, as it wasn’t intended to be used for this particular stitch.  The walking foot started malfunctioning when I was sewing on the binding. Very annoyed with myself.  Hubby thinks that there is so much plastic in the walking foot, I may have caused a piece to break inside the case. I took it in to my Janome dealer to have a look today.  Fingers crossed.  I looked to see the prices on a replacement and had sticker shock!

Although I have a lot of this Moda Christmas fabric, I am nearly out of the neutral, so there probably won’t be any more of this pattern in the future.

On another note, I am still thinking about the quilting of my Mittens Pet Mosaic project.  Stay tuned!

Quick edit – Linking this post to Oh Scrap!!  on Quilting is more Fun than Housework blog!  Fun projects with scraps on that blog!  Check out the button for Oh Scrap on the side bar of this page.

 

Happy stitching!