A Lovely Year of Finishes - 2015 version!

My life is incredibly busy right now - and it seems that every time I turn around, another task gets added to my already overflowing to-do list.  I don't know if this is a good time to commit to a January ALYoF project, because I have no idea if I'm even going to have time to pick up this project - but then again, maybe it's the inspiration that I need!
A year or two ago, I started cutting a 2 1/2" by the width of the fabric, strip of fabric from every quilt I started.  Most of the time, projects call for "yard-age", and of course, Canada is a "metric" country; so, if a project called for 2 yards of fabric, I'd buy (or pull out) 2 meters of fabric.  That way, I'd always have a little extra, just in case I bungled a cut, or whatever....  Most of the time, I'd end up with 1 or 2 extra 2 1/2" strips, and I'd set them aside.  Then, in September or October, I needed to work on something new, and I remembered my extra strips!  I cut them in half, making two 2 1/2" x 18" strips - and I sewed 7 of those strips together, making a rough-cut square.  I sewed the strips into tubes, and cut 2 1/2" sections, until I ran out of strips.  I unpicked the top seam of the first strip, the second seam of the 2nd strip, and so on; then I resewed the strips together, and ended up with "Scrappy Trip Around the World" blocks.
I've chosen to try to finish this quilt top for my January project.  I suspect that I have enough strip sets to make at least 2 tops, depending on how large I make them, but I'm going to commit to making only one top for now.
These are some of the strip sets, and the first blocks that I made:

There are a number of different ways of putting them together, so the layout should probably be my first decision!

New Year's day mystery quilt

Oops!  I just realized that I promised pics of my mystery quilt, and I totally forgot to post anything about it!
I have done several of Heather Spence's mysteries, and always have a great time.  She designs a quilt, and chooses a charity - then, anyone that wants to participate makes a donation to the cause, and we get the pattern clues.  I love that we have the option of choosing a local charity as well.  (This time, the charity was a woman's shelter.)  We got the cutting instructions a few days ahead of New Year's day, along with the note that it would be a modern quilt.  I had planned to make it entirely of Kona solids, but I needed another piece of yardage for the 1st background colour - so, I toodled over to my local quilt shop, where coincidentally, their anniversary sale was on...  They didn't have the colour that I was after, but they DID have all their batik Fat Quarters on sale!  I needed 13-14 FQs, and I found that many (and even a few more!), and they begged me to take them home with me.  How could I resist that?  So, I found a new background colour that worked with my FQs, and went home.  The quilt went together fairly easily and quickly, and by the time I headed to bed, I had the top finished - and here it is:

It was SO much fun to see the different quilts that were produced from that pattern - each one very different from all the others, and every colour of the rainbow.  Now the challenge is to get it quilted (it's quite large at approx. 75" x 100"), and then deciding who will be the recipient...