Through the Garden Gate Blog Hop begins - enter to win the signed raffle quilt

Welcome to the 2017 Fall mystery blog hop! I am so excited to be starting this blog hop off and to tell you about this project.

For those of you here for the first time, my name is Sheila Christensen and I am a quilt addict - so much so that I bought the shop! I have been the owner of Quilters' Lane in Masterton, New Zealand, since 2011. In 2012 I designed my first Mystery Quilt.

How does the Mystery work?

• We offer a choice of colourways and sizes.
• Each month for ten months you receive a pack of perfectly cut shapes and instructions for sewing them together.
• You can follow the clues as people post them on facebook in our friendly group.
• In the tenth pack you get instructions for putting the quilt top together.
• Mysteries start in February (New Zealand and USA) and July (USA only).

I love seeing all of the different mystery colourways coming together, and our facebook group is a great way for Mystery Quilters to interact and share the buzz! Anyone can join the group and it is a great way to see what the mystery is all about.

You can see photos of my previous Mystery Quilts by clicking on the Mystery Quilt category on the right. This is one of the 2016 quilts.

The Mystery has become so popular here in New Zealand that last year I contacted Kim Moos, President of Cotton Cuts to see if she would be interested in offering the same program in the USA.

We met up in Houston at Quilt Market and hatched the plans, and now Cotton Cuts are offering not just one but two Mysteries each year.

Here with are with Jennifer Sampou, designer of the 'Snowdrop' colourway fabrics.

Kim is working with Valley Industries to produce the packs for my second Mystery quilt of 2017, which I have called Through the Garden Gate.

Valley Industries is a sheltered workshop in Hazelwood, Missouri, whose mission is to  provide dignified, meaningful employment for adults with developmental disabilities, while providing outstanding quality and service to their valued customers.

Here is Lemarr working on cutting fat quarters for Cotton Cuts monthly subscription boxes.

Jackie is folding fabrics to go in the boxes.

Cutting and packing all this fabric is a huge job, and I was so happy when Kim told me she was planning a Blog Hop to support this great organisation.

During this Blog Hop, we will be making up one of the Mystery Quilts, and the quilt will be raffled to raise funds for Valley Industries.

You can have a chance to win the quilt by entering the raffle Each of the bloggers will sign their blocks, so this really will be a one of a kind quilt!

Enter the raffle

Each blogger will make up one of the clues and send it to Kim who will complete the quilt. Here is the list of blogs where you will be able to follow the quilt being made:

Each Mystery Quilt I design comes in a range of colourways. The colours for 'Through the Garden Gate' are named after flowers - Violet, Rose, Geranium, Foxglove, Aster, Zinnia, Hydrangea and Snowdrop. These are four of the colourways still available - Aster, Snowdrop, Geranium and  Zinnia.

This is all the information you get at the beginning to see what you are in for (apart from the size)!

For the raffle quilt we decided to join #Team Aster. We are using Carolyn Friedlander's beautiful 'Friedlander' range from Robert Kaufman.

So, here is the first clue. In the pack is a colour chart, a set of instructions and all the pieces perfectly cut and ready to sew.