Mystery Quilt Unveiled

Remember that mystery quilt I told you about?

I bought British Patchwork and Quilting magazine a couple of weeks ago (before I made the stripy bag), but I've kept it in a plastic bag inside another bag, until I got round to experimenting with the blocks. I did that this week, and came up with one that made the pale yellow blocks work with the darker green. I was certain this was not their design, but it felt like a good one.

I've now looked at their design: it was completely different. They said the smaller blocks could be combined in several ways, but their design did not resemble my layouts in any way, whatsoever. One big difference was that my two pattern blocks were both green, whereas their pattern blocks were two different colours. At some point, I'll show you a photo of my blocks in their layout, and one in my layout. I haven't taken it yet though ;-).

I went to the quilt show organised by Inca Studio with a friend yesterday. She is a professional quilter, and she looked at quilts in a different way to me. I tend to ignore the actual quilting, but she studied it closely. She could also tell which patterns were from a book, and if they were exact copies (down to the colours). Apparently it is unusual for a new patchworker to be able to mentally change colours of designs. Another thing she could do was spot 'old' fabric ranges from five or so years ago. I didn't realise there was such a turnaround: will this have a disasterous effect on my stash as I panic buy fabrics I think I might like to use one day?

There was one quilt that did use older fabrics: I recognised one from my youth - a green background, with blue flowers and one spots. Somewhere there are some Sindy doll clothes made from it. Another fabric was the instructions from a panel for making a toy or similar, and a different fabric probably dates from 1992, as it had the dates of 1492 and 1992 on it.

I did buy some fabric (maybe piccies later), but I've discovered if you do take a professional along with you, their purchases will make whatever you buy seem like small change.