Wild Thread Mystery Row Quilt-along! Who wants in?

I have a great group of quilting friends.  We are a mini group called the Wild Threads.  Mini groups often sprout from a larger quilting guild and are usually 12 or less members with similar interests.  Some are formal and others, like the Wild Threads, are not.  We try to get together once a month and sometimes it is an all day 'marathon' at a local church.  We also go on retreat twice a year and even went on a cruise last fall!!  That was awesome. Sometimes we hit the road and go to a quilt shop or quilt show or both!   We got a little flaky in the past 6 months (we almost became the Loose Threads, lol) but we've tightened up our schedule and made plans for the rest of this year.

I like to gather inspiration and motivation from lots of quilting blogs and websites and I'm using some ideas that I find for the Wild Threads.  Over the summer I linked them to this site for the Great Granny quilt along and most of us completed quilts of various sizes.   I really like Lori Holt's quilts (and btw, how hilarious is that photo in her header?) and she has great quilt-alongs.  Right away she started another quilt along and I decided to use her idea and do one for the Wild Threads.  At our last get together I got my hands on the 'talking stick' (a wooden spoon) and pumped the gals up for a 'Mystery Row Quilt-along'.  I'm not a quilt designer but I often modify things that I see and merge them with other ideas.  I plan to do this and, every month for 6 months, I will give the WT's directions for a block and we will make 6 of them and create a row for a quilt.  I have only made one row quilt and you can see it here.  It was a kit that my mother gave me and I really really enjoyed making it and love it!

Anyway, Lori from Bee in My Bonnet inspired me and here is Row One for the Wild Thread Mystery Row Quilt-along, hereafter to be known as the WTMRQ.

I got out my pencils.  Did you ever use these in school?  I love pulling out a dull point and pushing up a new sharp point. 

 

 Graph paper is handy and so are colored pencils.  I had lots of blocks that I've been sketching for a while but I am going to keep this simple.  I don't want any drop outs from my first quilt along.

 

 

At work I do a lot of the staffing and assignments (a truly thankless job for sure!) and a co-worker gave me a couple of big fat erasers.  How fun is this?!  The one I use at work says 'Shit' and it's gotten a lot of use.

 

Okay okay, let's get to work. 

Row 1

You will be making 6 blocks.  I chose to use the same background fabric for each block and the focus fabric for each will be different.  I had a heck of a time choosing fabric.  In fact, for over a week I have been making a mess in my sewing room and there are short stacks of fabrics all over the place.  I had a lot of combinations that I liked.   I finally said, 'phooey!' and settled for making two quilts at once. 

For each block, cut the following from the Background fabric: 

4- three and a half inch squares and

4- one and a half by two and a half inch rectangles

And, cut the following from the Focus fabric:

1- two and a half by six and a half inch rectangle and

2- two and a half inch squares.

The print on the left is my background fabric.  Isn't it cute?  My sister Hannah got it for me.  Are you reading this Hannah?  It's finally done marinating in my stash!

 

 

 Ok, fabrics are cut and it's time to fire up the machine.  Sew the little background pieces to one side of the focus squares and to both ends of the the larger rectangle.  Like so:

 

 

 Next - take the background squares and sew them to both sides of the small units that you made.  You will now have these two segments as well as the long one from the previous step.

 

 

 Line them up like this, sew them together and your block is done.

 

 

Wah lah!! Ta dah!  and hip hip hooray!  It's a plus sign!  Not so hard at all.

 

It really didn't take me long at all to make 2 sets.  These are really the same size but the set on the left looks larger doesn't it?  The set on the rights has one of my all time favorite fabrics as the background.  It's white with red dots and I have vowed to buy yards of it (and of red with white dots) whenever I find them.  The focus fabrics for that set are a variety of prints in red, black, white, and grey. 

 

Everything from my stash folks!!