Gathering Mystery {Weeks 8 & 9}

I said that I was going to catch up on my Gathering Mystery quilt, and I wasn't joking!

I spent a lot of time chain piecing over the long weekend, and had a lot of ironing to do on Sunday night!

For Week 8, we joined our Week 2 and Week 5 units to make one larger unit. All of the seams lined up quite well and I only had a few that I redid! That's a huge plus in my book.

For Week 9, we made two different units made mainly from our Week 4 and Week 7 units. These went together extremely quickly because there were not any seams to match!

Coming up next: Week 10! We'll be making full blocks and then for Week 11 (the final reveal!) we'll be putting it all together!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday! Don't forget to check out my latest Island Batik Ambassador project!

Gathering Mystery {Week 4}

Despite the fact that the Week 7 (!!!) directions come out today, I have only just finished Week 4 which seemed to take forever, mainly owing to the fact that I am a crazy person and decided to make the Queen sized quilt.

For Week 4, our assignment was to make two different square-in-a-square units. I had to make 64 of one of the units and 40 of the other. I spent a lot of evenings pressing and trimming dog ears while I watched baseball. And of course, LOTS of chain piecing.

Another thing that took quite a while was meticulously keeping all of my directional prints in the same direction. While it didn't really matter for my blocks on the left because all of the side triangles are my background fabric, the blocks on the right were a different story.

All of the units have the green zig zag fabric going in the same direction as well as the day lily print going from upper left to lower right. That took a bit of planning and made me glad that I didn't cut my green squares into triangles until I knew what I was doing with them.

Even though this was a little fussy, I am EXTREMELY glad that I swapped the green zig zag and the orange day lily from their original assignments in my fabric pull because these units are definitely better as a result. The orange day lily print would have gotten SO chopped up and wouldn't get to shine like it does in these units.

For Week 5 we are making "half snowball units" -- meaning that we're starting with squares and adding stitch and flip corners to two of the four corners. I have all of my diagonal lines drawn on my squares, but I need to just find the time to do the stitching.

For Week 6, we are making "house units" which is essentially a half square-in-a-square unit. I haven't drawn the lines on these fabrics yet.

And of course Week 7 gets published today!

Want to join in with me? Pop on over to Cora's Quilts to find out more! Don't forget to pop on over to my last post to enter to win some yummy Island Batik fabrics!

Gathering Mystery {Weeks 1, 2, & 3}

Because I am a crazy person and can't resist joining in new quilt alongs, I have started working on another quilt as part of the Gathering Mystery QAL hosted by Shelly at Cora's Quilts. I've actually watched from the sidelines for both of her previous mystery quilts and finally decided to jump in myself.

Before we moved, I pulled the fabrics for this project from my stash -- entirely from my stash other than the background fabric -- wahoo! This color scheme is completely different than the example color scheme, but I did actually follow her suggestions for which fabrics were light/medium/dark other than one fabric.

Here are my fabrics other than my background when I pulled them starting at fabric #1 at the bottom, and fabric #8 at the top. My background is Kona Oyster (which you can pick up in the HBD fabric shop on Etsy!)

When the cutting directions came out, I decided to swap the fabrics I had chosen for #3 and #4 because I didn't want to chop up my beautiful day lily print up any smaller than was necessary! I will still likely use that fabric for the binding (because I don't have enough left of my green ziggy print).

I like cutting new projects because I can cut while I watch TV with my husband in the evenings without the sewing machine noise interrupting things. Our week #1 assignment was cutting so that was perfect! Here's everything cut up for other than my background fabric:

Our week #2 sewing assignment was to make a lot of stitch and flip rectangle units using our background fabric and fabric #7 (my dark teal floral). I spent a whole baseball game drawing diagonal lines on my small squares for stitch and flip corners.

Our week #3 assignment was to make two different "flying geese-ish" units using a stitch and flip method. After a few that were a little wonky, I actually zipped through these without having to redo too many! Needless to say I have done a LOT of chain piecing over the last week.

Here's the first two weeks of units, the top row is Units 1a and 1b, and the bottom row is Units 2a and 2b.

Did I mention that I'm making the queen sized version? Those piles have 64 units for 1a, 1b, and 2a, and then I made 80 2b units. I also ended up making a lot of pretty trash! There's still plenty of time to join the party if you're intrigued by my block units! Hop on over to Cora's Quilts to read all about it. :)

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and NTT!