Finished Or Not Friday: The Cotton Harvest Is Finally Done!!

I have fantastic news to share for this week's Finished Or Not Friday over at Alycia's Quilty Girl blog:

I have finally finished my "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll" Quiltville mystery quilt!

This was Bonnie Hunter's 2010 Quiltville Mystery Season quilt.  After the mystery was over it was published in her book "String Fling: Scrappy, Happy and Loving It" (and a preview of the quilts in that  book can be seen here).  Although I followed and downloaded Bonnie's mysteries from when she began offering them in 2008, I didn't get up the nerve and organization to actually try to make one until 2016.  This particular quilt was started in 2018.  Yes, it was a looonnng harvest!!

Bonnie is known for designing scrappy quilts.  She gets her fabric for them from her prodigiously collected scrap bins that are organized using her "Scrap Users System".  Bonnie's quilt designs may have a definite color scheme but the fabrics in them will run the gamut of print style and time.  She is famous for finding and using millennium fabrics from the year 2000!  

While I have gone fabric shopping for some of the Bonnie projects I have made, with the exception of the inner border, backing and binding, this is one that is made all from scraps.  This project got started when I realized that I had fabric leftovers from three projects that used the colors that could get this one started.  

Double Delight, On Ringo Lake and Emeralds contributed.

Ironically the two projects on the left are also Bonnie designs!  The holiday quilts that I started for Christmas 2022 contributed more....

Leftovers were taken from Temecula's 12 Days of Xmas, Jelly-ish Snowflake, The Last Dash and Cherry Crunch (another Bonnie design).

The strings all came from cut offs of neutral/background fabrics and were collected over the years.

Each time I mined scraps, I would complete one step of the mystery.   In 2019 when MODA Fabrics and Lori DeJarnett of Humble Quilts ran string piecing challenges, I began to focus on trying to get the string blocks for this project done but I found those blocks to be hard to leader/ender (a piecing concept popularized by Bonnie) with regular blocks.  So it wasn't until the holiday season in 2022 when I embarked on making "Cherry Crunch" which also called for string blocks, that I made significant progress on those. 

"Cherry Crunch" strings on the left, "Cotton Boll" strings on the right.

Working those together in tandem helped me focus on getting this last part of the puzzle done so I could proceed to finish all the blocks and then the top.

This was also a great project for pulling inspiration from multiple sources.  Right after I decided to get this project in gear, I saw some cotton themed prints on sale that I knew had to be the backing.

Then I saw an old episode of Georgia Bonesteel's "Lap Quilting" show from the 80's and knew that had to be on my label when I made my backing!

BTW:  If you are a fan of Georgia Bonesteel and a member of the Quilt Alliance, her "Birthday BOM" block and interview are up on their site now (and Bonnie made a block and interview for this BOM too)!

That's not to say a big project like this didn't have its challenges....  

Like that block on the end...

I didn't discover this one until after it had been quilted in!

When I had finished the basting, I realized I had a few pleats pinned in on one side of the backing.  I thought I had worked them out before the quilting.  Nope!

There are a couple more like this.  

As a result, I think they caused the back to be a little short of the width on that side.  On the plus side, to make it stretch I had to include a little of the selvedge in the back which I think adds to the charm and history of it! 

At this point, I think a little of "Bonnie's Collected Wisdoms" are in order:  

Back in September when I displayed my quilts in a show that my community garden held, someone said to me that my quilts showed I have "patience".  I countered that I saw it as a sign of persistence.  Let's face it, there were plenty of people who finished their "Boll" quilt right away during the mystery season so these can be run up quickly with the right amount of focus on them.  

However, I could have also given up on it at any point in the five years (!) it has taken me to get it to this point.  It was really (no, REALLY) wanting to have this one as a finished quilt that has kept me going and kept it always near the top of the "To Do" list.  Even better, it is the one thing I was able to completely cross off this year's UFO Challenge list even though it took all year to do it!

If you've hung on with me this long, you'll agree that this project has been a "long and winding road" for sure!

Now join me in heading back over to Alycia's to check out what other people have finished (or not!) this week.  This will be the last look at all the creative work for 2023 before we all start anew for 2024!!