International Mystery Quilt of the Month -- and JAM

We've been doing the International Mystery Quilt of the Month at my local quilt shop, Bolts in the Bathtub, for four months now (which sadly means I have four more UFO's). Each month we get the fabric in our choice of colorways for the blocks to make a lap size quilt. A lot of people participating in this have varied the block sets and have purchased additional fabrics so that they are really more individual than one would think.

I don't know who made each quilt; they were handed to Dawna and she held them up. That's her black skirt under each quilt....


This is an interesting set for the blocks from the third month -- I think that was Sweden...there were two other colorways; one was blue and yellow, the other was red/green.

Another interesting set for those blocks -- the addition of the grey fabric really set off the black/white piecing.


This is from the second month, Italy -- this was the color set referred to as Lasagna.....

The log cabin blocks from the red/green colorway in the third month; I haven't really looked closely at the directions yet, but I think this is the set that was given to us.

This is from the Italy month -- this colorway, red/green/cream, was called Lasagna!

Again, this set is a variation that sets it apart from the rest of the log cabin quilts; this has been a really fun thing to do -- everybody does something just a little different!

The lady who made this quilt said that she had made a block construction mistake and so altered the set to accommodate the error! I love the creativity that a simple mistake can inspire!

Lasagna, but she purchased more fabric to make additional blocks so the quilt is a lot bigger...

At the end of the meeting, Peggy showed her bargello quilt -- king size and gorgeous!

JAM (Just Another Monday): A couple of weeks ago, Dawna called me and asked me if I wanted to join a small group of quilters that would meet monthly. She and a couple of friends had counted up the number of kits they had purchased and stuck somewhere in their sewing room and decided that they should get working on them. The goal of the group would be to take one of the kits out of quilt oblivion each month and finish it.

I have to admit that I do buy kits -- sometimes they just look so tempting and I don't even have to spend the time picking out fabrics. I buy them and toss them in a bin along with all the other kits I've purchased, thinking that someday I'm going to make that quilt! So I went to a local coffee shop last Monday to meet with five other kit obsessed quilters to see what the game plan would be.

Tiffany Hayes, of Needle in a Hayes Stack (a wonderful pattern company -- you should check her out! Click here to go to her website) brought photos of her 37 UFO's that she would like to work on. Being the most practical of us, she figured if she participated in JAM for three years, she'd have all but one of them done. I, on the other hand, am a total chicken and don't want to even think about my UFO's, let alone all the kits I have!

This should be a really fun group -- I'll take photos of the finished projects at the January meeting so you can see how we are doing on our goals!