It's Time For the Annual Quiltville Mystery!

Now that Thanksgiving is over (and I hope you enjoyed yours!) that only means one thing:  No, not Black Friday --- well it DID mean that but it also means.....

....it's time for the latest Bonnie Hunter Quiltville mystery which this year is called "Good Fortune".  Inspired by her her trip to China last year, you can see the color palette she is using in the Introductory post here and the first set of piecing instructions which came out yesterday and are here.  If you've always wanted to try picking alternate colors for her mysteries and wondered (as I have) how to try that, Bonnie did a great Facebook live chat with Holly Anne of String and Story which you can pick up the link for from Bonnie's post here.

Having completed the tops for the last two mysteries (and still needing to make backings for them), I'm sitting this one out although I look forward to downloading the latest one as the clues are released each week.

The mugs are available from Zazzle.com

But this doesn't mean I won't be having any Bonnie-style fun while the new mystery is running.  First off, my primary leader/ender project at the moment is "Scrappy Trips".   I'm hoping to keep making blocks through the end of the year and get the top finished before 2019 rings in.

On the mystery front, I've really admired Maggie Fellow's (of the Making A Lather blog) quest to complete all of the Quiltville mysteries by the time this latest one was released.  Of the fifteen mysteries to date, she has completed eleven and has an alternate color version of two of the mysteries also in progress. While I'm not interested in making all of Bonnie's mysteries, I was inspired by Maggie's challenge to consider making a few of the ones that I've always liked.  As of right now, I have stash either fully funded or started for three of them:

Old Tobacco Road:  I've got a stash of dark bricks which started off with "On Ringo Lake" leftovers and then I added additional scrap and stash injections.  Scrap dark and neutral strips, squares and triangles have also been set aside for when I'm ready to work on this one.  The only reason I haven't already started it is because I'm holding this very easy piecing project as a travel project in the event I finally get to travel to see my friend in GA.  I even found a great deal on some grey gridded flannel that I can tack up and use as a design wall while away.  My friend and I just recently talked again about making meet up arrangements but with the holidays now upon us that may go on hold for awhile once again.

Double Delight:   I've fully funded a stash for making this mystery from 2008.  I think I didn't like this one when it was originally released.  However, seeing it recently I realized that two of the main colors in it are double pinks and indigos.  So of course it now tantalized me as a potential quilt to be made up in Civil War reproduction fabrics.  That's all it took to get me started!  Once I'm finished with Scrappy Trips, this goes into the queue as the next leader/ender.

Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll:  Also doing a Quiltville challenge this year was Jo Kramer over at Jo's Country Junction blog.  She had set out to make all of the quilts from Bonnie's String Fling book before her latest book "String Frenzy" was released.  That book is now out (and can be purchased from Bonnie here or C&T Publishers here) and Jo is down to the last quilt which only needs borders and to be quilted.

12/10/18 Update:  Jo finished that last quilt and posted her "parade of quilts" from the book here! 

I would also like to make one of Bonnie's string quilt designs and for a long time debated about which one to do.  Falling in love with "Double Delight" reminded me that I've also always loved "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll".

The good news there was that I was able to dig up a bunch of neutral strings and grab phone book paper for piecing foundations for this one as a starting point.  That project can also use leftover pinks from "Double Delight" and greens from "Tobacco Road" and "Emeralds" (a Fons & Porter project that's also been fabric funded from the stash).  If this ever gets up to the front of the leader/ender queue, I should be well on my way to having what I need for it.

So I hope you have fun plans for this year's mystery season.  Whether it'll be sewing along with Bonnie on the new mystery or working on some of her other mysteries or another project (there's still time to get some holiday sewing done), any day spent with your machine will be a good one!