sewingpup

I have gotten hooked on Bonnie's mystery quilts.....and yep....they are a lot of work...and yep...they are fun to do....and In my opinion....best started when the first clue comes up and I really push to keep up.....I have finished three of them and do to health problems have another two partially finished and I really want to try this years one. I have loved most of them once they came off the long arm....except for Grand Illusion...which was too busy and too bright....well guess what....that one is on my bed during this stressful times and it raises my spirits everytime I look at it...for some reason, I now love it! It is my favorite...tee hee....and the concept of doing scrappy quilts seem to have grabbed me in a big way....I am currently trying to finish a "biggy" simply nine patch I decided to make out of my larger print scraps and solid fabric that I am going to use to practice ruler work and already I am starting to love some of this huge scrappy blocks....when I look at my traditional 4-5 fabric quilts...they just look so boring! Yikes.....I even sometimes have started just making scrappy blocks without knowing what I am going to do with them and sometimes they grow into a full or queen sized quilt....

maminstl

I never thought I would do a mystery quilt, but gave it a try and did a few of Bonnie Hunter's. I do kind of like the small pieces, and thought they were fun, although the last one I completed I put together wrong - no big deal, just went with it and it's fine. Last years though, is sitting in a bin in a thousand pieces in my sewing room and I know I will never ever finish it. Not feeling the love, possible due to my fabric choices, possible due to the difficulty I had understanding the instructions. Then again, the reveal did not make me like it any better. Either way --- done with mysteries.

Macybaby

I do them mostly for the companionship of it. If I couldn't share progress and see what everyone else is doing, I'd not be interested. Even if I don't personally like the quilt, I always find someone who does so it's not like any will sit in a closet and be forgotten.

zennia

I can not do mysteries either or scrappy. I guess I am a color control snob. I need to know the outcome before I commit. I do crumb doll quilts and they are fun but they are small.

Homespun

I have done 4 of Bonnie Hunter's mysteries...no problems with any offthem. But I don't have as large a stash as she does, so I would have to go out and buy material and I am trying to work only from my stash.

Watson

I have done a few mystery quilts. Most I have enjoyed, a couple not so much but it was because I got the colour placement wrong.
My favourite MQ is Merry Mayhem's 1 day quilt on New Years' Day. I do it every year.
There is a site, Mystery Quilts anonymous, that offers MQ's and also leaves up the ones that they have finished, so you can see what the results are and then go by the directions. She has some nice ones.

Watson

MicheleC

I am interested in doing mystery quilts but I haven’t made the commitment yet. I have been working on finishing what I have in line before starting anything new. I think they sound like fun.

Edited to add: I absolutely had no problem submitting my order for today’s deal on MSQC. I love Free Spirit fabrics!

juliasb

I haven't done a mystery quilt in more than 20 years. The last one I hosted for a Holiday wall hanging. I burned out. To many were to closely related to each other. I do collect the occasional BOM. I am inpatient however and will from time to time sneak a peek to see what is coming. I am also bound to miss one here or there and then am out of luck.

Iceblossom

It's the wonderful thing about quilting, we all get to do what we want to do!

I usually have enough projects planned and going on that I don't usually have gaps in my schedule and don't do mystery projects very often. I also have my own style and I find it hard to work in other styles... But I really do enjoy group projects and working together even when we are miles apart, whether it is working separately on the same things, or swapping blocks, or whatever -- I was a happy solitary quilter for decade but it is more fun in a group.

Last year was my first Bonnie Hunter mystery I actually did although I've lurked and watched other projects over the years. I knew going in that Bonnie's and My Style were different, and as one lady in my Tuesday group pointed out "but you don't like lots of tiny triangles". And it's true -- I don't, but I had a bag of fabric (that turned out to be a lot harder to use than I expected) and time and an opening in my schedule and I had fun. And Bonnie is great at what she does, I just do things a bit different...

I had sort of a quilting hang-over from going along with the mystery in real time, and then Covid struck and then the rest of 2020 I've just been having issues... I'm finding it very hard to do my own stuff, but I can follow directions and respond to things, so I did my first round robin (which was so great once the anxiety attack I had for the first two months passed). Otherwise, I have not done any of the 6 projects I had planned for this year. That's ok because the fabric is still there and there is next year.

I'm going to do Bonnie Hunter again this year but with easier fabrics. I'm a big believer in pressing open but I'm going to follow Bonnie's directions for pressing to the side to see if I change my mind (unlikely) but it gives me a different construction technique and at the end I end up with a top ready for someone else. That's part of my willingness to do mysteries is because most of what I make is for donation and I don't even really have to like it, but it is a lot easier to complete things if you do like and find joy in them.

I am lucky enough that I have a lot of time available to me -- when I was stingier with "my" quilting time, mysteries were not for me. When I had to schedule in things like quilts for weddings and such, those had to take priority but hey I have a small family and they are pretty well covered with quilts at this point. Likewise, I have a large extensive stash I've grown over the years, but spending a hundred dollars or more for something I'm pretty much not going to keep isn't for me either. There is a certain freedom using things that theoretically go together and be able to say "well yeah, maybe I could have done better with what I had, but it was a mystery and so I didn't know".

Among my current quilting goals is to get better with things like sampler quilts. Again, I sort of like being able to blame any bad things on the designer and that it is a mystery... I didn't do it in real time but I did print off the Canadian Row by Row, and I'm going to watch what they do for 2021, I liked but didn't do the last two years so I figure chances are good that I'll enjoy this year's project.

Snooze2978

I also like to see how it looks finished so I download all the steps and wait to see. Then if I like it I do it. No harm there.