Last-minute mystery ideas

Anyone with some quilting and piecing experience under his/her belt can still whip up the Part 1 blocks in our Beyond the Block Mystery Quilt and enter the mystery quilt contest. Deadline for entries is Tuesday, August 31—all the contest details are on page 66 of the September 2010 issue of American Quilter magazine. (And be sure to read my blog posting of July 23, August 5, or August 24 for an important cutting correction to the Part 1 instructions.)
But you don’t have to enter the contest to enjoy the fun. Here are some of the amazing focus blocks our readers have created.

Deborah Dunten of Houston, Texas, used flower photos (above) she digitally kaleidoscoped and printed on fabric. “They were originally going to be put into a Row Robin quilt but became orphans. This is a perfect use for them. I’m loving it! Can’t wait to get the next installment,” she writes.

Christy Turner of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, celebrated her “darling daughter” in these excellent photos-on-fabric focus blocks. Christy, what an amazing tribute quilt this will be!

“Since I was very young, I have been fascinated by fences,” writes Janet Springfield of Pendleton, Indiana. “The designs, types, materials, and uses for them have no end. So when I read about the mystery quilt focus blocks and asked myself what truly fascinates me, the answer was fences.” Such artistic blocks, Janet. Your quilt will be spectacular.

“My focus fabric is fussy cut from ‘Savannah’ by Michael Miller Fabrics,” says Marlene Oddie of College Place, Washington. “It reminds me of an award-winning painting by my high school friend, Stacy Barter. The magazine description of a non-traditional setting with a great visual impact sold me on using my fabric to make this mystery!”

Cynthia Felts of Rolla, Missouri, decided to make this quilt for her soon-to-be-five granddaughter. “I drew the outline of three different butterfly shapes with the help of clip art from the Internet. The shapes are machine appliquéd to the background squares using a satin stitch. I added some details with thread-painting. I really enjoyed working on this. Thanks for the excellent directions.” What a gorgeous quilt this lucky little girl will receive!

Carol Weber used a lovely autumn color scheme for her blocks. The leaf print focus fabric is presented beautifully in a circle-in-a square setting.

Even if you don’t enter our contest, perhaps you can take some inspiration from these photos and all the others I’ve posted the past couple months. Though the final block settings revealed in Part 3 will be similar for all these quilts, the colors, prints, themes, visual impact, and “voices” will be distinctly different, reflecting the personality of each quilt maker or recipient.