Welcome aboard new mystery quilters and new quilters in general! Bonnie gives very good directions, she really does -- but she also tries to keep in some mystery elements so maybe some of the things we do seem rather strange.
I've been quilting for many years and I am a seams-open person and I cut large and trim down for accuracy. I'm going to follow Bonnie's to the side directions this year, with both precise cutting and side seaming -- it will be a different construction technique than I'm used to so there will be an aspect of newness to me too.
Last year I also had to learn/improve on organizational skills and bought a lot of clips! Love clips now, Frolic showed me the need for such things. I really recommend having things in place before we begin, so I have a box I'm putting my greys in now and will use for the project. Printing out the Clues is a big help, especially if you aren't going to have it done by New Year's -- after a certain point the clues are taken off the web.
She says to go ahead and start with about half the pieces if you are not sure. from what other quilters have done it probably takes a bit more than half to get a nice sized project. Nice thing about scrappy is you can always add more.
Typically in her quilts there is a lot of what I call "front loading" making a lot of tiny little subunits. If you are planning to go along in "real time" there can be some pretty at least time intensive days involved, but remember that the only schedule we have is the ones we impose on ourselves. There is no way when I was a working single mother that I had enough time to do this much sewing in December!
I'm at a spot in my quilting/life where I have the time available and the fabric and I find it sort of freeing that I know in advance what Bonnie's style is and that I might not love the final project -- someone will! I'm finishing up a Frolic UFO from another board member right now. As I say, she lost her joy in the project. She also likes my line about "getting everything you wanted out of it prior to completion". That can happen in mysteries too. I can tell you that there are many uncompleted Bonnie Hunter projects scattered around the world
I am about to layout the top of the UFO today, and have committed myself to a border. Haven't been in the best health/very perky last few weeks but I think I'm still set to have the top done by the end of the weekend, and then I can really turn my attention to selecting my fabrics for this year... Black Friday approaches!