Frolic quilt – Bonnie Hunter’s annual mystery quilt

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 apologize for the messy hair day. But, hey, at least you get to see the finished quilt.

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.