Well, I’m done with the bulk of the work for Bonnie Hunter’s Frolic quilt – her 2019 annual mystery quilt. I know, I know. I have two borders of half-square triangles still to sew, but in my mind the bulk of the sewing on this top is done for now.
I didn’t have as much fun with this year’s mystery. This is in no way a criticism of Bonnie. She’s a wonderful quilter and wonderful person. And, she does such a huge, huge service to the quilting community with her annual mystery quilts!
She uses her annual mysteries to teach a lot of fundamental techniques to newer quilters. Given the number of people who sew Bonnie’s annual mystery quilts, I know it becomes a HUGE pain for her. Simply because she’s deluged with questions and feedback – some kind and some not so kind.
I think the lack of fun was my own quilting/creative funk (and I had no idea what 2020 had in store for me and the rest of the entire planet). Also, there was a specific blue fabric that I used in this quilt. The more I saw the fabric, the more I disliked it.
Will I do another Bonnie Hunter annual mystery quilt? I can’t say definitively, but most likely. In fact, I’m working on her Unity quilt along right now – a quilt along that she started for everyone socially distancing and looking for a new quilt project to fill their hours and days.
What do I like about her mysteries quilt projects?
Intricacy – I enjoy Bonnie’s intricate patterns.
Scrappy – Bonnie celebrates scrappy quilts – using up scraps of material and creating amazing quilts in the process.
Skill builder – It never hurts to re-learn basic blocks and to test and improve on that skill by sewing a ton of blocks.
Excitement – I really enjoy the once-a-week clue reveal, and the fact that Bonnie’s annual mystery starts every Black Friday. What better way to spend a Black Friday than spending the day at the sewing machine.
Oh, yeah, if you go back to my earlier posts about this year’s Bonnie mystery, you’ll notice that I was making two different versions – one scrappy and one using solid fabrics. I set the solid fabric version aside for now. It may become a leader and ender. But, for now, I worked on finishing the scrappy version.
I also enjoy the intricacies of her blocks. The way the blocks come together with the sashing in this quilt design is genius. Reading your post makes me think we might be quilting twins. 😉
We might be quilting twins 🙂 I do like the intricacies of her blocks – and often the second pattern combos that happen when you sew her blocks together.