"Old World Fantasy" - Week 1
If you haven’t yet see the overview and idea behind my first ever mystery quilt - well, go to this blog post and read about it.
I am hoping that you can join along!
My advice to you with this project is to NOW find a box or basket or big zipper type bag to keep all your pieces in AND all your scraps until we are finished. Just don’t throw anything away yet. Well, you can throw away pieces (or throw into your crumbs piles) pieces that are smaller than 1.5”x1.5”. Everything else, please keep. You may be able to use them as we go along.
For this mystery quilt, I will be sharing “how to” in two different colorways and giving the numbers for 3 sizes in each one. I hope we can keep things straight.
The colors I am showing are Red/brown/(old) gold or Royal blue and gray
The sizes will be
lap - about 60”x60”
full - about 80”x100”
queen - about 100”x100”
Without any more ado, let’s get right to the first clue.
Today’s “clue” is not going to be too difficult or complicated. We’ll “ease” into the complicated stuff a bit later.
Find your “constants”. Yes. Locate them! I tend to use strip piecing, so that is what I’m going to show, but if you prefer cutting and sewing one piece at a time, well, sure, you can do that. That is perfect if you are going very, very scrappy! We are going to start with simple 4 patches!
A couple of general notes:
Use 1/4” seam allowances.
Press seams after making units. If you finger press as well as Donna Jordan, finger pressing is fine for a lot of it! I tend to use my iron almost all of the time.
For the Blue/Gray quilt:
My constants:
Cut a strip of royal blue constant fabric 2”x width of fabric (WOF),
Cut a strip of dark gray constant fabric 2” x WOF.
Cut 2 strips of your light gray constant 2” x WOF.
Sew a 2” strip of royal blue to the 2” light gray constant.
Sew a 2” strip of dark gray constant to the 2” light gray constant.
Press. Lay out flat and straight.
Cut off segments at 2” intervals the length of the strips.
Now sew together your segments to make a four patch.
You will need this many:
Cut off segments at 2”. -
for lap size - 16 segments of each colorway
full - 48 of each colorway
queen - 64 of each colorway
Sew those segments together to form a 4 patch
Each of these little four patches should be 3.5” at this point in the process.
Make this many for each size:
lap - 8 of each colorway
full - 24 of each colorway
queen - 32 of each colorway
And that’s all for this week!
The rest of your Homework is to find a nice place to store you various pieces and scraps so that you don’t lose them from starting this project until you finish it. It will be several weeks.
Because “life” is in a “non normal” state right now for all of us the world over, be sure to keep extra watch over these pieces as it is easy to become distracted and disorganized when life is so strange. That’s why I encourage the zipper type bags and the box of some sort to keep everything together.
Also, if you haven’t located fabric in these colors, continue to look around for more fabrics in the colors I’ve shown. A nice variety will make the quilt more interesting!
Now..you can whip these little 4 patches out in no time and get back to taking care of the kiddos or making masks or whatever you are doing - maybe sewing other things! Maybe you have time to finish a bunch of your quilts! Yeah! Go for it!
For the Red/Brown/Gold quilt:
My constants:
Cut a strip of dark brown constant fabric 2”x width of fabric (WOF)
Cut a strip of red constant fabric 2” x WOF.
Cut 2 strips of your gold constant 2” x WOF.
Sew a 2” strip of brown to the 2” gold constant.
Sew a 2” strip of red constant to the 2” gold constant.
Press. Lay out flat and straight.
Cut off segments at 2” intervals the length of the strips.
You will need this many:
Cut off segments at 2”. -
for lap size - 16 segments of each colorway
full - 48 of each colorway
queen - 64 of each colorway
Sew those segments together to form a 4 patch
Each of these little four patches should be 3.5” at this point in the process.
Make this many 4 patches for each size:
lap - 8 of each colorway
full - 24 of each colorway
queen - 32 of each colorway
And that’s all for this week!
The rest of your Homework is to find a nice place to store you various pieces and scraps so that you don’t lose them from starting this project until you finish it. It will be several weeks.
Because “life” is in a “non normal” state right now for all of us the world over, be sure to keep extra watch over these pieces as it is easy to become distracted and disorganized when life is so strange. That’s why I encourage the zipper type bags and the box of some sort to keep everything together.
Also, if you haven’t located fabric in these colors, continue to look around for more fabrics in the colors I’ve shown. A nice variety will make the quilt more interesting!
Now...you can whip these little 4 patches out in no time and get back to taking care of the kiddos or making masks or whatever you are doing - maybe sewing other things! Maybe you have time to finish a bunch of your quilts! Yeah! Go for it!
You can download a summary of this post by clicking on the “Old World Fantasy” picture towards the top of the page! You will get a PDF summary of this week’s clue.
Clues will be released on Fridays until we are finished! See you then for that!
(Hope to see you tomorrow though - got lots of OTHER things to show you as well between now and next Friday - this isn’t the only thing happening - just one of them!)
Have a great day wherever you are reading this!
Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!