Originally Posted by catrancher

I just finished this quilt top today. It was from a 3-part mystery quilt series from American Quilter magazine, the third part of which was just published. The magazine title was "Beyond the Block Mystery Quilt," based on the Beyond the Block book where you can see more quilts like this.

It was to be a challenge quilt for my guild, but then I grew disenchanted with my guild and stopped going to meetings. The challenge was to make a quilt from a children's book title, and it should also be from one technique that we hadn't tried before. Mystery quilts were new to me, and so I decided on this one. My focus fabric was floral, and so I chose The Secret Garden as my book title, thus the name. It has 12 different fabrics.

This was definitely the most challenging quilt I've made (my 30th). The blocks were all strangely shaped, and there was a lot of trimming to fit involved. It got very confusing. Still, it came out okay. Just a few puckers and a little cheating, and it all came together. I think I'll free motion quilt it, but I haven't decided yet. I still need to decide on a back for it.