Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt - Chilhowie

After some pondering, I've decided to join the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt again this year.  It is called Chilhowie this year. The first post on the mystery can be found here. This post gives information on the colours and amounts of fabric needed and the first clues will be up the day after American Thanksgiving.   I had a good time this week digging through my scraps and stash finding colours.  I will add and remove from the stash yet as I go along I'm sure.

I had this Ana Maria Horner wide back on the table for another quilt.  Doesn't it look great with the colours?  But, this backing is meant for another quilt :-).

Here are the possibilities so far from my stash.  There is definitely enough to get started on the quilt. The pain chips are clipped to the baskets.

Good Fortune Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt finished

The Bonnie Hunter mystery from 2018, Good Fortune, is finished.  I got it finished before the new mystery started, but I'm going to pass this year although the colours were very tempting 😀.  But I am resisting so I can get back to working on ufo's again.  

This was a fun mystery which is made entirely from my neutral and Kaffe Fasset stashes!  And, that didn't put a dent in either stash yet. I was a little worried using the large scale prints, but they worked well.   I am very happy with the way it turned out.  

(Click on the photo to enlarge for a better view.)

Finished quilt

The perfect striped binding was in my stash too and I was one strip short and my neighbour had the exact fabric!!

Close up of the blocks

Here you can see the beautiful quilting my neighbour Chris did on her longarm quilting machine

The label and Kaffe Fassett backing.  It was a little more pink than I wanted, but it was in my stash so I used it up.

Backing

June 29, 2022 Granddaughter, Lauren, chose this quilt for her graduation from grade 12 gift :-).

Progress.......and ripping :-(

In 2007, I finished my first Leaders/Enders quilt from Bonnie Hunter's website. I had so much fun doing these units that I started another one using beiges/creams and browns/greens. I also did other four patches in between. I've had more than 50 of them completed for quite awhile.

I use my trusty Singer 15-88 for most of my piecing and usually have a stack of 2" squares ready to use as leaders/enders:

I sorted out all the blocks and organized them this week and have 90 blocks finished. I think I have enough HST's and four patches ready to assemble the last 10 blocks. I may use this setting again, but will experiment with a few other ideas before putting the top together.

Progress is being impeded, however, with the discovery of 7 wrong blocks :-(. I will have to get my 'best friend', the stitch ripper out!

Meanwhile, I've been sewing a LOT of four patch blocks together and have quite a pile accumulated. I'd like to do a quilt with them, but can't come up with a brilliant idea? Set them on point with black squares and setting triangles? Putting them together as just four patches makes a checkerboard which isn't too exciting.

Josh and Janneke's quilt

Today was my nephew Josh's wedding to Janneke. The wedding was very nice and the weather was perfect! This is the quilt that I made for their wedding gift. It was so much fun to make. The pattern comes from Bonnie Hunter's www.quiltville.com site. It is from the leaders/enders section. I started it in February of 2005, cutting out blue and white or cream 2" squares and pairing them together into four patches. I also cut triangle squares from 3 1/2" strips of whites/creams and blues as per the instructions on Bonnie's page. I used those pieces as leaders/enders (or thread pads as I was taught :-) for several months. I put them together into a 60" square quilt and then added 2 1/2" blue borders to frame it. I had a lot of fun quilting feathers into the light diagonals with light blue variegated King Tut thread. I quilted leaves into the border. By this time, I had done a lot of leaves and got brave enough to use contrasting thread on the blue borders! Actually, I was too lazy to look for darker blue thread :-). I was very happy with the way it turned out. Here is the completed quilt:

A closeup of the border and feather quilting:

The Feathers:

The center of the quilt:

The label:

Amazing what can be accomplished while you're working on other quilts! Thanks so much Bonnie for the wonderful inspiration!! I loved this quilt so much that I almost didn't want to give it away...solution? Start another leader/ender quilt in blue and white! Again, it is pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer Centennial treadle made in 1951 in Canada. Did I ever mention that I LOVE this machine? :-)

Nick and Anita's Quilt

Here is the latest quilt I finished. It was for Nick and Anita, who got married on July 14th. I couldn't post the pictures earlier, because a) the quilt wasn't quite finished; b) it had to be mailed in the US and c) I didn't want Anita and Nick to see it on the blog before they actually got it! Just heard that they have received the quilt in the mail so here it is! We went on vacation (and to a sewing machine collector's gathering) in Michigan the week after the wedding, so I took the quilt along, finished hand stitching the binding and attached the label. We then took it to a Post Office we found along the way and the friendly clerk (who was born in Canada!) helped us mail out the quilt in a 'foreign' country :-). Nick is an American and they moved to the US after the wedding. The quilt pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's wonderful website www.quiltville.com. It is made from 2 1/2" strips and called "Boxy Stars". If you look carefully at some of the corners of the star blocks, they look like three dimensional boxes.

I started auditioning fabrics to blend with the border fabric from the "Giverny" line. The white with little green flowers was perfect for the background and centers of the stars.


A closeup of the border fabrics:

The quilt is entirely pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer treadle from 1951. I quilted leaves in the sashings. The green corner squares and navy blue sashings were of leftover fabrics from Ben and Heather's quilt.

A closeup of the quilting in the block. I also got brave and did the outline quilting around the star freehand. I was happy with the results. This will greatly help quilting on a large quilt....no more wrestling with a huge quilt turning it at every corner!


It's a little hard to see, but I quilted freehand feathers in the border of the quilt. I had never done feathers before and figured this would be a good border to practise on. I'm including two pictures of it. If you click on the picture you may be able to see it better.

The label: