Mystery Quilt Along & Ribbons

 So I've been keeping up pretty well with this year's Mystery Quilt. 

Quiltville Mystery Quilt Along Here's the link if you wan the pattern. It's available for free until February. 

I switched up my colors of course. 

And it's coming together! I just have the border to make now!

This year it's kind of not my favorite, yet anyways. 

In past years I've liked it a lot more. Something about those X in the middle of the alternating block, not my fav. But when it's all done It will be fine I'm sure.  

I've also been working on this project for my Sister. She had a basket full of ribbons she earned at horse shows over the years. She saw on social media that it could be made into a wall hanging. Well it sounds easy enough......

It is a project, that's for sure. But it's coming along. Ribbons are different to work with, they just ravel away if you breathe on them!

But I think I'll have them stitched into submission eventually! I'm using monofilament thread, so that's different too. And I'll have to figure out a project for all the rosettes too I think! 

Rhododendron Trail Mystery Quilt DONE!

So, remember I posted that I was working on the Bonnie K Hunter Mystery Quilt this year. It's called  rhododendron trail.
 

Well big news! I'm done with it!

Here it is after I got the top together, 

Look at all of those flying geese blocks!!

I always forget how much I like the look of blocks set on pint, but don't really like to DO it!

I love the colors I've go going on here.

I did make a bit of a learning mistake. I made the tiny corner blocks on the sashing  the dark blue color and it blends right into the green and disappears. Such a waste of time to put them in when they disappear!

Oh well, I quilted it with my walking foot on the baby Lock Lyric. Just followed the diagonal lines. It came out great!  I used this cute backing, after DD gave me guilt. I was going to use a bright floral print, and she said it would be aweful....so I caved and went shopping and got this cute fabric from Home Ec in Iowa City. 

It has tiny houses with reindeer and snowmen on it. So cute!

Here I'm quilting away-this is a pretty big quilt, something like 100" x 84".

It took some serious muscling it around, but I got it done! I waited a few days for a day when it wasn't quite so cold outside to get an outdoor picture of the whole thing.  

Here it is on the muddy, snowy hillside.

You can see the true colors so much better, and you can also see that I used more than one neutral white color.

Oh well, it is what it is. 

All in all it was a good quilt, nice big blocks. The Mystery quilt is available for free until Sunday at the Quiltville Blog. After Sunday, you'll have to buy it.

Now to get it into the washer to get the mud off.

Crinkly goodness after washing, here we come!

Just for comparison, here's Bonnie K Hunter's original Rhododendron Trail completed, and here's mine. Both are really great looking quilts!

Finishes and It's Mystery Time!

Here it is all finished. It's been a little cloudy the last few days, but these pictures are closer to actual color I think.

Nice even scrappy binding, I love that nice even stitching! And loopy loop quilting.

And good looking corners too! Sometimes things just work out well.

I also got a few more masks made up. A friend of my Mom's who lives in the heart of Cyclone Country, is a huge Hawkeye fan, so I made a few more Hawk masks for her to send to her friend. 

And a special mask for Mom too.  I got this Bernina Fabric in FLA when we were on vacation last February.

I've started using This Pattern  for this batch of masks. I like the extra nose piece. To me they are comfortable and fit better so my glasses don't fog up as badly. I made these masks with the nose wire in them this time too. Really it is a better fit with the wire.

And I saw this Holiday Hawkeye fabric and knew it would be  loved, so I made a few of them to mail off too! 

And it's getting to be that time, yes, Mystery Quilt Time. If you follow Bonnie K. Hunter-she's a very popular quilter-you'll know that she creates a special mystery quilt every year and you just have to go to her blog, HERE  to quilt along. She published the inspiration and the colors on Halloween and the 1st clue (or step) is coming up on the day after thanksgiving (Black Friday). This year it's called Grassy Creek. 

Last year was Frolic...here's my Frolic Quilt from last year......

I switched up a few colors from her choices. 

I love the look of this quilt and but was such a different assembly method, I hope this year's will be a little bit easier!

And here's her inspiration and color choices for this year....Photo from https://quiltville.blogspot.com/2020/10/grassy-creek-quiltville-mystery.html

And so the mystery begins! Photo from https://quiltville.blogspot.com/2020/10/grassy-creek-quiltville-mystery.html

Here are my fabric choices...I'm attempting something different, because I really don't have any red or orange in my stash and not much gold either! I started out with this-all from my stash...but it kind of seemed not good. Ringo, likes it though! I'd need to go scrappy on the grays, because I don't have enough. The Mystery quilt is always scrappy-that's kind of what they're famous for, but I'm going with yardage this year!

So then I took out the aqua solid color and put in a more subtle teal color and then I purchased one gray instead of multiple scrappy gray.... . I like it a lot better. I tried to not buy any fabric for this quilt, really I did! SO Mine will look quite a lot different! I'll keep you posted! 

Frolic is DONE!

 So back in November I started the Frolic Mystery Quilt Along from over on Bonnie K Hunter's Quiltville Blog..

The mystery quilt comes along every year in November and Bonnie K Hunter is famous for her use of scraps, scrapiness, and these mystery quilts.

 SO, I'd been collecting the instructions as they came out every week or so, but I kept having things come up while I was trying to get it all cut and sorted and up to speed!

We went on vacation....

 and I had to stop and make a couple of other more pressing quilts.....

 And the holidays came and went....but NOW IT'S TIME!

Look at this...the blocks are set on point, so there were a bunch of setting triangles to make.

 Look at the mess of seams!! Nothing seems to want to play together nicely at all.

 And the borders! OH my goodness-sooo many pieces!!!!!

 I just went my own way with the border...I had so many extra pieces!! The Designer said there would be extras, because she thought it was the best way to make the directions work for a mystery quilt. Booooo!

Anyways, I got the border done and the top is complete!!!! This thing is huge!

 And so it sat around for awhile, waiting for a day warm enough to spray baste it outdoors with my garage door method. Finally Saturday was the day!!!!

 Look at the size of this beast!

 I am loving it a lot. I struggled with a little breeze, I struggled with the spray can that wouldn't spray and the can whose nozzle fell of...GRRRRR. I was so frustrated!

 But look, one whole day meandering around with lovely purple variegated thread and she's done!!

 It finished at about 92" square.

 It went through my Babylock  fine, not too much struggle.

 I couldn't find a place high enough to hang it up, so the ground was pretty dry here!

 Love this backing fabric I got at Hobby Lobby for only $3 a yard! I needed 6 yards so that was a total steal!

 I'm glad this one is done!

Here's the original made by Bonnie K Hunter. You can see all the ones folks made by visiting her blog, facebook anmd Intsagram pages.

I'm just glad to get this one in the wash and decide where to put it!