Pulling for Celtic Solstice!

Since it's only 4 days until Bonnie releases her first clue for this year's mystery quilt, Celtic Solstice, I figured it was about time I pulled my fabrics.  This is the third year I done her mystery and love the stress relief it brings me over this busy time of year.  I also suffer from SADS (Seasonal Affective Depression Syndrome), so having something to look forward to gets me through the dark days of winter north of the 49th parallel.

 

 

I joined a group on Facebook of fellow mystery quilters that grew so quickly they had to close the membership after it reached over 2,000 members.  There has been a lot of discussion of what to pull so I thought I would share my thought processes here.  If you came here from the group, welcome!  I hope you enjoy it and maybe learn something.

 

Before I talk about my selections, I'll show how I organize my fabrics. I have followed Bonnie's Scrap-User system for about 3 years now, and the top row of my bins collects my strips as I cut them, plus strings and selvedges.

 

 

The second shelf of bins holds fat quarters and fat eighths, sorted by colour (under the shelves are my bins of zippers, bias tape and misc. notions).  PS: I hacked my ironing board/shelves out of an IKEA shelf - you can read more here.

 

 

Off to my right, I have started organizing my yardage on comic book cardboards (this is anything that is full width-of-fabric (WOF) over about 1/3 of a yard.

 

Finally, when I have time (or I'm looking for specific colours of strips like I was tonight!) I sort the strips I have cut into these drawers:

 

 

I cut my scraps into strips of 1 1/2", 2" 2 1/2" and 5" (which I can cut down if Bonnie calls for 3 1/2" or other size strips).  Each bin holds a specific colour from top to bottom: Red, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aquas and Teals, Blues, Purples, Light Neutrals (including whites and creams) and Dark Neutrals (including brown, gray and black).  Ideally each drawer looks like this:

 

 

(with leftover HSTs from other projects), but in reality most look like this:

 

 

These are the neutrals I'll be using for Celtic Solstice ( I may pull out the darker cream ones).

 

So far, I have only gone through the drawers and bins of precut strips:

 

Blues

 

 

Greens

 

 

Oranges and Yellows

 

 

I may need to pick up some more bright yellows, but I'll wait until I've seen the clues to do that.  I surprised myself with the number of oranges I had.

 

And here are all the colours together (the oranges decided to hide) :

 

 

Next up, I'll start digging into my fat quarters and fat eighths, but again, I do that as I review the clues and look for more variety. 

 

Is it bad that I want to skip my work Christmas party Friday night so I can sew instead?  I probably won't be able to it until Sunday, but I'll be thinking about it all weekend. 

 

Have a great week,

 

Terri in BC