It's a Mystery to Me

Last week, I entered a Modern Mini Mystery Quilt Round Robin.  I'm not supposed to blog about the work I add onto others' quilts, because the end result is supposed to be a surprise. But I can blog about my starter block!  As soon as I finish this 6 1/2" square, I will send it off to another quilter who will add onto to a little something and so forth. Meanwhile, each month I receive someone else's work and will add onto it a 1 to 2 inch border of my choice. We all should be getting our finished quilts back in December, with our square in the middle, or someplace else on the top.

I never tried the Stack and Whack method before, so I bought Bethany Reynolds book, "Stack-n-Whackipedia" when Borders went out of business. This week, I tried my first block.

 Step 1, I cut the fabric into a 21" strip and then sliced off a little of the end to use as my guide.

 Step 2, I used the guide to find where the pattern repeat begins again, and cut there, and continued until I ran out of fabric.

 Step 3, I spent a really long time pinning the layers of fabric in the exact same spot. This is the slow going part, since my vision isn't what it used to be. And it never was that great to begin with.

 Step 4. So now I have a carefully pinned pile of 8 layers of fabric.

 Step 5. Next, I first cut the fabric into a 2 parallelograms, then into 45 degree triangles. Thank you, oh high school football coach/geometry teacher somewhere in Ohio! 35 years later, and I still remember that stuff! For some reason, Aerosmith plays in my head when I calculate angles. Why is that?

 Now, the mystery reveals itself. I formed the triangles together to see what patterns emerge. This 1/2 yard of fabric yielded 4 octagons.

Next time I blog about this, I will be showing you the final block.