Half Square Triangle Quilts Are One Of My Favorite Things

Remember those little half square triangles from a couple of weeks ago. Well, this is where I am with them at this point. I’m not exactly sure where this will wind up or how big it will be, but I think I at least have an idea. I’m loving the spectrum idea, I’m just not sure I have enough variety of fabrics to really pull it off.

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It seems to have been good timing as the president of my quilt guild just issued a new challenge. A quilt with all half square triangles and nothing else. It will be interesting to see what others come up with as well. There are so many things you can do with them, it’s really limitless in its possibilities.

I’d love to see any HST quilts that you have made as well. Comment below and link to your pictures or post if you would be willing to share.

This year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

As I have done the past few years, I began working on Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery quilt back in November. If you are unfamiliar with this, let me fill you in. Every year, Bonnie Hunter, who is an amazing quilt designer and teacher offers a mystery quilt pattern that releases on Black Friday and usually goes into January. What is a mystery quilt? A mystery quilt is made little by little as “clues” are released once a week. You have a week to complete each step and once all the pieces are made, then the big reveal at the end shows you how it all goes together. The mystery is that you won’t know what the full quilt pattern will be until the very end. That’s the fun of it. Bonnie does this out of the goodness of her heart and makes the pattern available for free during the time when the clues are being released. It’s a way for those who maybe struggle with the Holiday season to have something fun to look forward to and keep them occupied during what might be a lonely or difficult time for them. Thousands of quilters from all around the world join in every year and it is really fun to see the excitement and the posts of each clue on Bonnie’s Facebook page.

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This year’s mystery was called “Grassy Creek”. I went completely rogue with the colors this year. She mentioned in the directions which of the colors from her palette would be the most dominant color. I knew I wanted a different color to be my dominant color, so I chose what I wanted and went from there. I turned Bonnie’s palette to a black and white photo and then chose my colors based on the amount of yardage that was listed and the tonal value that that particular color had. In the end, it allowed me to use much more of what I already had in my stash and colors that spoke more to me and who I am as a quilter. I just love bright clear colors. I’m so thrilled with how my top turned out. I made a smaller number of units than Bonnie’s original plan. I just did not need, nor did I want to make, a quilt that large. Mine is plenty big enough for my needs.

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I’m pretty sure Aeris loves it, too.

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A Little Catching Up

Its been a little while since I blogged about anything, so I thought I should probably catch you all up a little bit.

I’ve been working on the Good Fortune mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter for the last several weeks, pretty much exclusively. I went through many different border ideas because I wasn’t crazy about how my color choices played out in the border that was originally designed. It was all just a little too “Go Vikings!” for my taste. No matter what, every time I looked at that overwhelming purple and gold it just screamed football to me and that is just not what I was going for.

So then I tried this.

That seemed a bit much, so then I thought about this.

But that seemed too washed out. So I settled on this for that round of the border.

Then came the final outer border. I just pieced together a bunch of neutrals. My plan was to have neutral squares for the corners, but of course, once I looked at that, it seemed a bit blah. So… on to trying to figure out what to do with the corners.

These are just some of the options I considered, but ultimately, this is where I landed with it.

This is what the corner blocks look like all layed out together. I think this might make a really interesting block to do sometime as a quilt unto itself.

So the Good Fortune Top is officially finished. Measuring in at about 82 inches square, this is the biggest quilt I have ever made. I will be looking for someone to long arm this for me as this is way too big for me to tackle on my own. I don’t even have a place big enough in my house to lay it out on the floor to sandwich it, LOL. I’m excited that it will be big enough to use on my queen size bed, though. Even if the colors don’t match the room at all.

So there you have it, that’s the majority of what I’ve been working on for the last several weeks. I have one other smaller finish that I will share soon as well, but this is enough for today.

I've Been Through the Desert on a Quilt With No Name

“It felt good to be out of the rain…” Oh sorry… Anyway.

i’ve been working on this fun little number lately. I had several half square triangle (HST) units and four patch units left over from previous projects, so one night I just started throwing them up on my design wall and this is what emerged. I started sewing the smaller HST’s into four patch units yesterday and I realized this morning that I have a few of the four patches turned the wrong direction, so I will have to fix that. I’m trying to decide on a name for it, but I’m coming up blank. I thought about calling it “Throwing Up Leftovers”, but, you know, that didn’t seem like the best name for a quilt, LOL. Anyone have any ideas? Because, clearly I’m out of them, LOL.

Good Fortune - Quiltville's Mystery for this year

My last post talked about last year’s mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter. I’m also participating this year and as of right now we are four clues in. I changed up the color palette a little from Bonnie’s original color scheme. Her original colors were red, jade green, blue and orange along with neutrals in whites and creams. I changed the jade green to lime green, the blue to purple and the orange to yellow. Hoping it all goes together ok. I wanted mine to be just a little different than the thousands of others that will be out there at the end of the mystery. Here is a rundown of all of the clues so far. I can’t give sizes or piece counts, but I can show you pictures of what I have made.

Clue 1

Clue 2

Clue 3

Clue 4