Making a Mystery Quilt: Colour Scheming

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

Now that my schedule has regained some degree of normalcy, I'm excited to continue working on my projects!

Recently, I've been giving a lot of time to quilting, and have bee happily stitching away on Meadow Mystery and Stars of the City. The more time I've devoted to finding my preferred quilting style, the more I've come to enjoy this part of the quilt making process, but I do think that piecing is still my truest love.

And so, when I saw announcements about two new mystery quilt alongs, I immediately started planning!

Yes, I still have Stars of the Lily Pond and Hexie Harvest in the works, they are both still in the piecing phase and I am planning to continue working on them, but my eye has been caught by something shiny and new!

Indigo Way

The first project is one I had already hopped to participate in; Bonnie Hunter's annual mystery quilt along!

Last year was the first time I participated and I really loved the quilt, the community, and the personal way the pattern was written. The whole experience felt very friendly and welcoming, and I love the way my Chilhowie quilt has been coming together!

After all the fun I had while working on Chilhowie, I'm really excited to get started on this year's project, Indigo Way!

Like last year, this project will be released a little at a time, with one section of the instructions being revealed each week until the full pattern has been shared. The fabric requirements are the only part of the pattern available so far, but piecing instructions will start coming out this Friday!

With that in mind, I was excited to pick my colours and gather my fabric!

The original four colours suggested for this pattern are indigo, light blue, red, and any selection of neutrals to pull them all together.

These colours are bright and bold, but not something I would choose for myself. Instead, I've opted to go for something fun and colourful!

Since this is a mystery quilt and I have no idea what blocks or units will be used, I made up a quilt colouring page using random blocks to test how different colours would look together.

I played around with value and saturation, but stayed mostly within a yellow-blue-green-red colour scheme. I wonder in hindsight if this was at all inspired by Mom's Meadow Mystery quilt?

If it was, thanks for the idea!

After playing around for a while, I eventually arrived at a colour scheme I am really excited to use!

I love the bright combination of sky to royal blues, minty teals, salmon pinks, and the buttery yellow-beige!

These colours aren't all that far off from the original colour scheme suggested for this quilt, blue vs indigo, teal vs blue, pink vs red, neutral vs neutral, but I won't be making that kind of one-to-one conversion. I'll be mixing up my colours so they're placed in totally different sections of the quilt!

Based on the amount of fabric required for each colour and looking at some of the designer's other quilts, I'm assuming the neutral is her background with the other three being accent colours. I've flipped mine to use the darkest colour, the blue, as my background instead, with the other colours acting as accents. I hope it creates a fun and interesting effect!

With all of that in mind, I started choosing fabric!

I did my best to use fabric I already owned for this project, pulling all my beige, half the teals and pinks, and about a third of the blues from my collection. All in all, I only needed to purchase about 35% of the fabric needed for Indigo Way, the rest I already owned!

I'm really excited to get started on this quilt, only a few more days before I can start piecing! If I've piqued your interest at all, this quilt along is free to join and open to anyone, check out the Indigo Way page of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog for details and fabric requirements!

Oatmeal Raisin

All that planning and there's still another quilt on my mind!

The Canadian Quilters' Association is hosting another mystery BoM, which will run for the next seven or eight months. This quilt was designed by Kathryn Wilson Tucker and is called Oatmeal Raisin after her favourite cookie!

Like Indigo Way, this pattern also calls for four colours, but Oatmeal Raisin differs by not offering any colour suggestions and by requiring significantly more background than accent colours. Looking at some of her other patterns, this seems to be a common trend for this designer.

Without playing around with too many colour planning tools, I've already thought up this colour scheme:

The combined inspiration of indigo from Indigo Way and oatmeal from Oatmeal Raisin brought me to a combination of navy and beige. From there I added a few more neutrals to contrast this project from the bright colours of my Indigo Way quilt. This combination reminds me of barn swallows, so I pushed the values and saturation a little to reflect that!

I've only just started gathering the fabric I'll need for this quilt, I think I already have most of what I need in my stash already, but I've got several weeks yet before the first piecing instructions are released.

Even then, I don't think I'm planning to get started on this project right away. I have a lot of other quilts on the go and it would be really nice to finish a few of them before starting too many new projects, and Oatmeal Raisin will run into the Spring, so I have lots of time to get caught up if I start a little late!

If you're interested in Kathryn Wilson Tucker's Oatmeal Raisin pattern, the quilt along is free to join and open for anyone! Check out the details of the pattern on the Oatmeal Raisin page of the CQA website or support the designer by visiting her Quiltnasium site!

Friends, I hope I'm not going too far in over my head with these new quilt alongs! I'm doing my best to stay focused on finishing my current projects, but there are just so many amazingly talented designers, gorgeous patterns, and amazing events to be involved in!

If you're planning to quilt along with either of these projects, I'd love to hear about your colour planning! Or if you've been swept up in a delightfully distracting project of your own, please share that with me so I can get swept away too! Feel free to reach out in the comments below, on Instagram, or by emailing me directly!

I can't wait to get started on something new together!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA