Making a Mystery Quilt: Fabric Selection

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

This week, I am finally able to get started on my guild's Mystery Block of the Month with the recent release of the fabric requirements!

I’ve been excited to get started on this project since the initial announcement in September. I haven’t made a mystery quilt for a few years, my last one being in 2017, so I’m looking forward to taking on that challenge again, but with a little more experience!

If you don’t already know what a mystery quilt is, check out last week’s post on the origins of the mystery quilt genre to find out!

Now Friends, without further ado, let’s talk about choosing fabric for a mystery quilt!

Choosing Fabric for a Mystery Project

Choosing fabric without knowing how the finished quilt will look can be a little difficult. There are an infinite variety of options to choose from, which can be overwhelming, or you may feel limited by not knowing how your colour choice will affect the completed design. Either way, you will need to select your fabric before you can move forward with the quilt making process.

Here are just a few tips to inspire your fabric selection:

Yardage will help indicate the amount of each fabric that appears in the finished quilt. If the pattern calls for 2m of light fabric and 0.25m of dark fabric, there will be a lot more of the light fabric in the quilt.

Designers often provide tips related to the amount of contrast, types of prints, or other factors you should consider when choosing your fabric. These tips may help to provide focus or suggest things to avoid.

Follow your intuition. While it is important to acknowledge the tips provided by the designer, there is no obligation to follow them. Choose fabrics and colours that feel right to you.

Mystery quilts offer a great opportunity to experiment with different colour combinations, so if there has been an idea occupying your mind, now is the time to put it into a quilt! But before we can do that, we'll need to take a look at the pattern's fabric requirements.

Mystery BoM Fabric Requirements

Back in September when this project was announced, members of my guild were given a hint to get us thinking about fabric selection:

"there are five fabrics, one of which is the background. You could go scrappy.

We encourage you to use as much of your stash as possible.”

(Ward and Dodd, September 2021)

Even if the actual fabric quantities aren't given, this is a great starting point!

Knowing we need five fabrics, we can think about whether we want to use five unique colours, or a combination of fewer colours, but in a range of values. It also suggests browsing your stash, looking through the fabric you already own, and gaining inspiration from it.

The full list of fabric requirements for this project was released this past Thursday. It includes two dark fabrics, one medium fabric, one medium-light fabric, and one light fabric, the lightest being used for the background. Actual fabric quantities can be found on the MQG website.

Along with the fabric requirements, a few more tips are provided to help with fabric selection:

“If you decide to use scraps make [sure] each fabric selection is of a similar colour. Large prints and directional fabrics are not recommended.

Be sure to have contrast between your fabrics.”

(Ward and Dodd, October 2021)

Once again, participants are encouraged to work using stash, scraps, or other fabric we may already have on hand, but a few new suggestions are added as well. Specifically, the conveners emphasize the importance of maintaining contrast between fabrics, so this will be important to keep in mind.

With all the guidelines laid out, I can finally jump into my fabric selection!

Colour Scheming

While planning possible colour schemes for my mystery quilt, my biggest goal was to try something new. I love experimenting with new combinations of colours and fabric, and even if I don’t end up loving the quilt, I’ve learned something from making it that will shape all my projects in the future!

I had a few other ideas I've been mulling over since September that I'm also interested to incorporate into this project:

My first thought was to make a chart displaying all of my past colour schemes so I could see which colours I use frequently, and which I tend to disregard. I discovered, not surprisingly, that I use black in a lot of my quilts, accompanied by a variety of rainbow colours. All other neutrals, brown, grey, beige, and white, were not common, and neither was purple.

Another idea I’ve been considering, not just for this project, but as a generally interesting composition of fabrics, is to use a large format print for the background, and various coordinating solids for accent piecing. If going this route, there is no reason to plan a particular colour scheme in advance since all of the colours will depend on the print chosen for the background.

I also happened to become very interested in the idea of a brown background. I’m not sure what exactly brought this to mind, but there’s something about a brown quilt that feels very traditional, nostalgic, and comforting to me.

My final idea was to put my own twist on the given fabric requirements by inverting the values. Changing the light fabrics to dark and vice versa should create a totally unique effect in the finished quilt, while maintaining enough contrast that the design is still visible.

Working from these ideas, I drafted several colour schemes:

I would be happy using any of these, but the one I was most drawn to was the third one, with the green and umber on a dark brown background. The colours in this group were inspired by spruce trees; brown for the trunk, green for the needles, and umber for the cones.

Of the ideas above, this colour scheme includes some of my lesser used colours, a brown background, and a dark/light value inversion. This gives me lots of new things to work with, and I’m excited to see how my chosen colours work with the mystery design!

Fabric Selection

Colours now chosen, it’s time to get my hands on some fabric!

Although the instructions suggested several times to work from your stash, my stash is fairly small and uncoordinated. Though I often purchase fabrics with no particular project in mind, I do so in small amounts, and the prints that catch my eye usually feature a variety of different colours and busy prints. Those aren’t exactly ideal for this project, but I thought I would take a look at what I have anyway.

And I’m glad that I did, since I ended up locating this:

Some of you may recognize the Oakwood fabric as the backing from my Simply Woven quilt, which I bought way too much of last fall. I have more than enough to use this as the brown background fabric for my mystery quilt, and the tree ring print connects really well with the spruce tree theme that inspired my colours!

The large tree ring print also ties back to the idea of using a large print for the background along with various coordinating solids. With the inclusion of a large print, I’ve actually managed to incorporate an element of each of my four ideas into my fabric selection!

The only downside of the Oakwood fabric is that it is much lighter than the brown I was originally planning to use. This didn’t turn out to be a problem, I simply brought a small piece of the fabric to the store when I went fabric shopping to ensure there was enough contrast between it and any potential accent fabrics.

And here is the fabric I’ll be using for this year’s mystery BoM! I’m really happy with the way they look together, and I can’t wait to see how my printed background and skewing of values affects the completed pattern!

With my fabric picked out and in my hands, I’m more excited than ever to start piecing together this mystery!

As it has become somewhat of a tradition over the past few years, I will be making this quilt alongside my Mother. The two of us will get together following the release of the block instructions, helping each other through any challenging parts of the pattern, and inspiring each other along the way!

The first set of piecing instructions should be available at the beginning of November and I would love to have you join us in this mystery quilt adventure! Check out the MQG website for fabric requirements, block updates, and piecing tips!

If you’d like to share, I would love to hear about your own fabric selection process in the comments below! You can also tag me in photos on Instagram @vafibrearts to share your progress there!

Friends, thank you so much for visiting me again this week! I’m so excited to see where this mystery project will lead, and I can’t wait to start piecing it next month!

Until Next Time Friends, Happy Quilting!

VA

References:

• Ward, Linda and Dodd, Mary. “Block of the Month.” Pieceful Pastimes, Mississauga Quilters Guild, September 2021, p.2. PDF circulated privately among guild members, no public access.

• Ward, Linda and Dodd, Mary. “2021-2022 BOM.” Block of the Month, Mississauga Quilters Guild, October 2021, https://www.mississaugaquiltersguild.ca/block-of-the-month.html.