Rhodie 123

Week 4 of Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail mystery quilt has just been released, so I think i should catch you up on my work for the first 3 weeks. 

The week 1 HSTs are right above. You can see I have a very wide range of values and hues for the pinks. I can get away with it thanks to the constant white on white fabric I'm using for the background. I've finally remembered why I have that -- I bought it for the background of my Texas Star EPP project. It's well over 10 years old and purchased from an LQS that closed long ago, sadly. It was torture hand piecing it and I switched to a solid white. But it looks great here, I'm very happy with it. Love that it's finally having its moment!

Week 2 was flying geese. With a scrap quilt I try to avoid sewing the same fabric to itself, just to heighten the scrappy feel and highlight the piecing. I've noticed that when units are mirror images like these they often end up close together in the final reveal. So I used completely different fabrics for the left and right geese. Hopefully that will simplify assembly later on!

Week 3 is just adding more white to our week 1 HSTs. It's quite boring, lol. You can see that I've been trimming the dog ears as i go, which definitely makes it slower now as well. But I know accuracy is a problem for me with a long diagonal seam, and it helps me a lot if the square sides are cut to measure before I sew. So hopefully that will make assembly easier as well. 

I've done enough mysteries now to know that the final assembly is the real test, and rushing the early weeks just costs time in the end if you have to go back and fix things. 

I still have a lot of week 3 left, but week 4 finally cuts into our darks, so I may jump ahead a bit. I have a good feeling about this one, with all the sharp contrast and saturated colours it should really pop!