Bonnie’s Winter Mystery

A whole lot of HSTs

It’s a tradition for Bonnie Hunter to begin posting clues for her annual Winter mystery quilt on the Friday right after American Thanksgiving, and she’ll continue to post every Friday right up until New Year’s Eve when the quilt is finally revealed. This year I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and I’m having great fun making 280 pink/aqua half square triangles, as per instructed, for the first step in Grand Illusion. So far so good, although it tends to get a bit tedious for me as I’m more keen to jump around creating entire blocks one at a time rather than the seemingly gazillion multiple units for all the blocks at once. I’m breaking up the monotony by working on other projects in between and that seems to be helping. The sewing itself goes quickly, especially when I get into the rhythm of chain-piecing, but the trimming up of each unit started to wear on my nerves. Just as I was reaching my breaking point it was all over… phew! Just in the nick.

Trimmings for Bird's Nests

By making my half square triangles slightly over-sized I could trim them down to ensure they were the perfect 2 1/2″ square needed for the quilt units. This is not for the faint of heart nor for the short of attention span, however, but in the end is worth every minute as each little lovely measures a perfect 2 1/2″ just as it should. Besides, isn’t this is all part of the process in a pastime that I love? I keep reminding myself of the wonderful article written by Mark Lipowski on the topic of ‘slow quilting’ and how this movement is influencing and enriching our approach to quilting, cooking,gardening, or just living, in general.

Broken Dishes

So, as of today, Wednesday, Dec. 3rd, I have completed the first clue of the mystery quilt and you are looking at 100 little blocks that contain 200 of those hst I made earlier. Everyone else seems to want to line them all up sweetly to take their photo, but I just tossed them about – after all, they don’t call them ‘broken dishes’ for nothin’, right. ;o)

Now I’ll be sitting on pins and needles, waiting for my next clue to be posted on Friday. If you’re interested in the Grand Illusion winter mystery quilt  travel on over to Bonnie Hunter’s blog at quiltville.blogspot.com for more information. Sew fun!

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