I was counting on the excitement of the mystery to give me some momentum getting my sewing area put back together. So the first step of this mystery was to get my work surfaces cleared. That pretty much took up Friday, but I ended the day with my fabrics out and ready to play!
Those are my colors. Looking at the picture they look pretty close to Bonnie's choices, but they really aren't. I'm using green, yellow, orangy red, teal, plum and neutrals.
I wasn't sure how I wanted to substitute my colors. The straightforward way would have been to use the orange for the pink and the plum for the black and leave the rest the same. However, I didn't go that route. I decided to use the green in place of the turquoise attempting to match the value of the color rather than the actual color. Next I used the yardage Bonnie gave to decide on the prominence of the color. So, we'll just have to wait and see....it is a mystery after all and I'm going for it!
There's Harley...he doesn't seem to get the concept that if I clean off the ironing surface I didn't do it for him!
And not to forget about Molly, who thinks if I get up from my work chair she's supposed to keep it warm!

Today I started the cutting. Boy oh boy! Cutting so many different fabrics is time consuming! I hate wasting fabric with each cut to straighten the edge... now since I've been introduced to string piecing I always cut an inch or more off when I straighten the edges. Lots of goodies for the string bins!
The other thing I've learned about cutting that gives me a more accurate cut is to use the straightened edge as the guide for multiple cuts.
When cutting 2.5 inch strips (in this case I'm cutting 2 strips) start with making the first cut 5 inches, then using the same straightened edge make a 2.5 inch cut. This will maintain the straight edge to measure from and means you don't have to restraighten the edge after every 3 or 4 cuts.
The other time saver I use for cutting from 2.5 inch strips is the 45° half square triangle ruler from creative grids. After pairing my strips right sides together and stacking 2 pairs, it makes pretty quick work of cutting the half square triangles. Much easier for me than flipping that easy angle ruler back and forth. Don't get me wrong, the easy angle ruler works great, but when I have 2.5 inch strips to work with I like the creative grids ruler. I was able to get 12 pairs from a half width of fabric strip. I like to cut my strips in half to match up with fat quarter strips and to make add variety to the pairs.
There's my 288 half square triangle pairs. Took about 50 mins to cut these. Haven't started sewing or cut the squares but I think there is hope I might start tomorrow before it gets dark out!
