In My Spare Time

People are always asking what I do in my spare time....As if I have any....But on the occasions I MAKE time to go do something just for fun this is my all time, #1 favorite thing to do.  The crowd isn't usually this big but this one happened to be at the Valdez Quilt Festival so the crowd was rather large.  Quilters from all over the state came to learn and socialize.  The halls leading to the classroom were lined with yummy fabrics just waiting to be caressed....and purchased.  I have to admit to buying Hannah some Lorax fabric.  She came with me as my official "baby holder" so I could sew hands-free.  It was her payment.

OK, so, on to what I was actually doing.  I signed up for the Mystery Quilt.  I love Mystery Quilts and I hate them all in the same breath!  I love them because of the Mystery.  I hate them because of the Mystery.  Ha!  It's a catch 22!

Once you sign up you receive your fabric requirements and cutting instructions for step #1.  Here's where the mystery comes in....YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FINISHED PRODUCT WILL LOOK LIKE!  The directions are somewhat vague...."You need X yards of light fabric", You need X yards of medium fabric", and so on.  They are kind enough to tell you when a directional (meaning striped or something where you want the heads to be upright, that sort of thing) fabric is a dumb idea but that's about it.  You complete step #1 at home.  I always sign up at the last minute so I always end up doing step #1 at the "class".

Here I am just quilting away.  This time I went "shopping" in my own stash so I could use up some stuff that had been  hanging around for a while.

Once I got to step #4 I realized they were going to be throwing a twist at us.  The blocks NEVER look this complete on the 4th out of 8 steps.  My guess was that we were going to be cutting them up and sewing them back together in a different way.....

I was right.  The next step revealed the cutting.

We then used some strips we had made earlier, but didn't know what we would be doing with them, to piece the cut up triangles back into a block and these are what I ended up with....

I left class with 4 out of 12 finished blocks.  It will literally only take me about 10 minutes each to do the remaining blocks.  I should get on that....In my spare time. ;)