Mystery Quilt Steps 1 & 2

I have long wanted to do a mystery quilt.  When I sat down and made a Quilting Bucket List about 2 years ago, that was on it. A few shops around here have done classes that are mystery quilts, but they were almost always on Saturdays and I worked Saturdays on rotation for most of the past 9 years, and of course these days it is very difficult to do a whole day class, because Munchkin.

So when I stumbled on to a mystery quilt along hosted by Carole From My Carolina Home, I threw my plan to not start any new projects out the window.  First of all, I discovered the quilt along in mid-April, and she started in late March, so I wasn't that behind yet.  And it was scrappy, plus I had enough of a light-colored fabric that would work for the background, so I didn't need to buy anything.  And many of my scraps were already cut to the right size, thanks to when I was cutting scraps into usable sizes pretty regularly. I couldn't start right away, because I was on a strict timeline for Geoff & Laura's quilt, but I knew I wanted to do it and could get caught up when my work went to Fridays off for 2 months of the summer.

I finally finished Step 1 yesterday, which included all of the cutting and making, then squaring up, about a billion half square triangles.  I am doing the lap size.  I chose to do truly scrappy, and didn't really weed out any scraps other than decide to not use batiks.  So there isn't a theme or a color scheme or really anything making it cohesive, other than the background fabric and the fact that I think that including everything tends to make everything go.  It's been fun to see so many of my scraps; many of them are from long ago projects and seem almost like old friends.

Step 2 was not nearly as labor intensive and I was able to complete it in 2 decent evening sewing sessions, last night and tonight.  Here is a sample of the strips from my Step 2:

Since the project is only up to Step 3, I'm very nearly caught up.  Step 4 is scheduled to be posted on June 10th, so as long as I can do Step 3 by then, I'll be on track.  I'm having a blast not knowing what is coming up and wondering what the final product will look like!