Indigo Way Quilt, An Annual Quiltville Mystery Quilt

I have written lots of tutorials connected to my annual quilting-along of the Quiltville Mystery Quilt. After taking last year off (from writing, not from quilting), I’m back with another quick look at the 2023/2024 Quiltville Mystery – Indigo Way Quilt!

Now, I won’t give instructions, or anything that will give away the pattern.  It’s not my pattern, it’s not my place to do that.

For a limited time, you can grab all of the clues (for FREE!) from Bonnie at Quiltville. 

She generally leaves the clues up for download until late January or early February. They are typically gone by Valentine’s Day.  She then re-releases the quilt as a pattern for sale, so you can still get it if you are reading this after the clues are taken down, but your best bet is to go take a look as soon as possible.

Color Palette

The Quiltville mystery starts each year on Halloween. That is the release of the yardage requirements, the finished quilt size and the color palette.

I’ve often changed the color palette, either to work with the fabric I already have, because the colors aren’t my style, or to please the intended recipient. 

I wrote up how to use gray scale photos to change the color palette a few years ago.

For the Indigo Way Quilt, the colors are Indigo, Lighter Blue, Red and a Neutral.  I didn’t run out to buy indigo, instead I substituted lots of Navy Blues that I had on hand.

While red isn’t my favorite, I had a bunch on hand to make some Christmas quilts.  I set the Christmas quilting aside and co-opted the reds for this project.  Luckily I also had snowflakes in navy and the lighter blue. Rather then a patriotic quilt, mine will have a bit of a Christmas vibe to it.

I used a bunch of black on ivory fabrics for my neutral.

Clue One

The Indigo Way Mystery Quilt began, as they always do, on Black Friday which is the day after American Thanksgiving.

Clue One was Half Square Triangles in Navy and Neutral.  I don’t have a tutorial for each of the steps in this quilt, but I have previously written about HSTs.  I generally make mine 2 at a time, and instructions are included for all manner of sizes that you can make.

Clue Two

Clue Two was Red/Neutral units called Triangle in a Square.  They were referred to by many others as Tri-Recs, but I don’t know exactly what that means.

These units were not made the way I anticipated (they ARE NOT equilateral triangles which is what I expected) but Bonnie included paper templates for rotary cutting and paper piecing templates for those of us who haven’t purchased the special ruler, so it all worked out.

I played around with what blocks might look like with Clues One and Two together.  I like them both!

Clue Three

The units in Clue Three were made of a light blue square, a smaller Half Square Triangle in neutral and then a larger navy Half Square Triangle.

Clue Four

Clue Four was a combo of Quarter Square Triangles (QSTs) and HSTs.  Again, I played around with how those units might work together.  I think it’s interesting that from each set of 4, half have a blue triangle and half have red.

My thought at the time is that these would be block corners once the full quilt is put together.

You can check out my Quarter Square Triangle tutorial, it’s got info for a variety of sizes.  These needed to be made one at a time so that the navy and neutral were always in the same position, but if the position of each fabric doesn’t matter as much, they can be made two at a time.

Clue Five

Clue Five was relatively straight forward diamonds in a square.  These are made by sewing neutral triangles onto each side of navy square. 

The interesting thing was that only some of them needed neutral triangles in all four corners.  Some only needed three corners, and some only two.

I was already guessing that the quilt would be set on point, and this increased my confidence in my guess; assuming that these would be part of the setting/edging triangles and the outer corners of the quilt.

Clue Six

I actually skipped Clue Seven during the mystery.  This clue had the same red tri-recs from Clue 2, but with light blue instead of neutral.

Sometimes when the quilt all comes together, I wish some piece had been neutral instead of another color, to mellow it out a bit. 

This clue seemed like a good place to wait, to see if I really wanted a red/light blue combo, or if I preferred to switch around the colors.

I did still intend to make the units. 

And then, after the reveal, these were border units and I liked the size of my quilt without borders, so I did not go back and make them.

Clue Seven

While Quiltville Mystery clues typically release on Fridays, this one came out on New Years Day and I completely missed it!

Rather than blocks and sashing, the Indigo Way Quilt is made of Blocks A and B and clue 7 was Block A.

Since I missed this clue and made my blocks as a part of the full reveal, I made a change to the block center.

While the Quiltville Mystery quilts are generally scrappy, sometimes making the larger pieces in earlier clues generates smaller scraps.

I wanted to use up some smaller scraps, I put 9-patches into the center of my A Blocks.

Clue Eight – The Big Reveal

Clue 8 was the big reveal in which the last of the clues are shared and quilters have everything they need to make the complete quilt.

I followed the B Block directions exactly, no adjustments from me on these ones.

After realizing that my quilt was the perfect size to use up some scrappy snowflake flannel for the backing, I decided not to make any borders.

I love this quilt and I especially love how easily it all came together!

Red is still not my color, but it sure is a pretty quilt.

To quilt my Indigo Way Quilt, I used straight line stitching ¼” from the seams.

Since the quilt is set on point, this worked really well to really tack down both the quilt and the scrappy backing.

Binding

I have not yet bound my quilt and am looking for some help making a decision.

{Photo 10}

I have three different fabrics that could work, but can make a case against each of them.

The navy stripe is not anywhere in the quilt top.

The red strip is red and I don’t love red.

The blue snowflakes are fairly light and wouldn’t frame the quilt.

The backing is flannel and is a mix of different navy and light blues from the backing scrap box.  While the binding only needs to coordinate with the front of the quilt, it would be nice if it didn’t clash with the backing.

What are your thoughts on which color I should use for binding AND why?