I'm so excited to have my mystery quilt top finished! Here's my "Allietare"!
I really love how the different fabrics for each color make it sparkle!
I was committed to using my stash and scrap collection. I had hardly anything at all left in the neutrals category, but I did have tons of golds/mustards, so I substituted those into the neutrals spot. That left left a need for something in the golds spot. I had liked the look of the teal in the original button for the mystery, so I decided to go with that. To counter the darker "neutral" color, I lightened the gray constant fabric to a silver. It's actually a completely metallic silver, too, which is neat. This color scheme meant I only needed a few fat quarters of blacks and teals.
It's always a gamble, though, whether your color changes will work in a mystery! I'm glad these did. As a couple of folks noted, it looks more Spanish this way than Italian, but that's just fine!
This colorway almost didn't get to emerge. When I had all my blocks made and laid them out - well . . . the effect wasn't floating my boat. I think my brain had developed a certain expectation that was very different from what emerged.
So I let it marinate overnight after sharing it on Facebook. The little bit of time away, combined with my 18yo liking it a lot, as well as plenty of online folks, changed my perspective, and I decided not to break it into two separate quilts made from the A and the B blocks. I noticed that it felt a little smooshed and busy to my mind's eye with the aqua popping out so prominently amongst other strong colors, and wondered if all it needed was some floating/framing of more golds/mustards to give it the space it needed to breathe.
And wow! Didn't that just do the very trick?! Laying out my black fabric for the border area and trying reds and aquas in the setting triangle spaces definitely confirmed that this color combo wanted breathing space. I had barely enough left of my golds to pull it off. I also had just enough of my teals left to give the edge a kiss of the aqua effect. I'll buy some more teal yardage for the binding, but it will be quite a while before this can get quilted. I sure wish I could see it completely finished NOW. :D
That outer diamond border is a work-up I developed using a bunch of the bonus HSTs I harvested when I made the flying-geese-type units. Whenever I do those in a non-multiples method, I always stitch a double seam so that when I cut the corner off, I get an extra HST to add to my shoebox of those. One day I'll get to play with them, and that's going to be a lot of fun to see what emerges!
In the meantime, I trimmed those babies down so that the finished size is TINY - a mere 1/2 inch! They are tiny, but as long as you trim them with excruciating preciseness, it's not hard to get them to sew up very nicely without losing your points.
It's also nice if, when you add your setting triangles to each 4-patch, you pay attention and attach them the right way. I put every single one on the 220 units THE WRONG WAY AROUND.
It took me 4 hours to take them all off without warping my units. Oh, well - it gave me some unplanned movie time. heh!! After that setback, putting together the skinny bricks to make the outer aqua border was a piece of cake! And fortunately my math was all on spot, so everything lies nice and flat despite the shift from on-point bias settings to the straight-grain settings on the gold floater boarder and the aqua outside border. By the way, I did baste all around the outside to protect the many seams along the edge from pulling apart at the edge.
I really enjoyed this mystery, and look forward to next year's! Thank you, Bonnie!
You really should see the great variety of finishes that are showing up. Bonnie has a linky where they are being shared - just click on this button:
Also linking up at Whoop! Whoop!
I'll just leave you with this out-take from the photo op in our back yard. Gotta love a timely snowstorm for quilt pictures!
