Bonnie Hunter 2020/2021 Winter Mystery: Grassy Creek
 

It's time once again for the Bonnie Hunter winter mystery quilt! This year there was no travel abroad to inspire the quilt, so the inspiration is the beautiful fall colors Bonnie enjoyed this fall while driving around in the Virginia area.

The introduction post for colors, theme and yardage is up on Bonnie's blog: https://quiltville.blogspot.com/

The first clue will appear on her blog on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving (here in the U.S.), which this year is Nov. 27, and each Friday thereafter until the mystery concludes. Someone will usually post the clue in this thread as well, and it can also be found on Bonnie's Facebook page (which we can't link to here), and can also be accessed (usually after a short delay) by clicking on the mystery tab at the top of her blog page.

Bonnie has certain rules for discussing her mysteries, which we will follow here. She asks that we not mention the size of units, nor the number of units we are making. Also, she asks that we not take pictures of our units on our cutting mats (or else cover up the ruler markings). We love seeing photos of your fabrics and your progress!

There was a helpful posting of the paint chips in grey scale on the Facebook page today. There isn't a lot of value contrast between the colors this year. The red and grey read as dark, and the gold, green and orange read as a little bit lighter than the red and grey. The were three points Bonnie made about value contrast in the intro post: The orange may appear next to the gold, so make sure you can differentiate between those two; not to go too light with any of the colors because there needs to be good contrast between all of the colors and the neutral, and stay away from yellowish and tan neutrals so they don't blend with the gold.

In the pictures Bonnie shows of her fabrics in the intro, she seems to have a wide range of values within each color.

For any first-timers to a Bonnie mystery -- welcome! Bonnie's quilts work best with small prints, because the pieces are usually smallish, so with a big print, you can't be sure of getting the right color piece unless you fussy cut. You can go scrappy, or you can use one fabric to represent each color.

This is a historic mystery for me -- the first time I will be able to use only stash! DH was thrilled when I told him, 'I won't have to spend a penny,' LOL. I'm also thinking of approaching the mystery this year as a leader/ender project, so I can keep momentum going with my current project.

I am thinking about joining in, but I don't want to use Bonnie's colors. I hated my Good Fortune quilt which did follow her colors!

I have a lot of blues, greens, and purples in my stash, but I'm really lacking in grays. So I'll have to go get a few more to mix in. I'm also thinking about adding in turquoise. Substituting colors for Bonnie's can be confusing. Anybody got a system worked out for this?

Thanks joe’smom for managing this thread another year. It’s hard to believe it’s November already...

I had to skip last year because I was moving, so I'm excited to jump back in this year.

Last year was my first Bonnie Hunter mystery and I was able to follow through it in real time despite choosing challenging fabrics last year. This year I'm mostly doing it to have something to do and because although I usually press my seams open, I'm going to do it to Bonnie's directions and to the side this year. I felt that (other than trying to keep the mystery alive) she gives very good explanations and that has always bugged me with pressing to the side.... "press to the dark side except here and there and this and that". I like having the one rule (press open except on curves) without any of the special corollaries.

This year I'm choosing more standard prints, and I can already see I need to put out a call to my Tuesday group members about grey scraps. I see Parakeet is back as a color this year...

I've had a terrible time this year getting started on my own projects, basically haven't done anything I planned to do (my quilting is usually roughly planned out 6-10 years ahead...), but I'm happier when I'm sewing and I am able to respond even if I'm not initiating much on my own.

My Frolic top is completed but not quilted down yet -- I think I might have a home for it now so it is moving up on the priority list.

In between now and the start of the new project on Black Friday, I also have a Frolic UFO to complete, goal is to get it put together and sent off before I start the next one. The original quilter did great work and got most of it it done, but there was a confusion on the mystery things and in one step 41 units instead of 41 sets of units was made, once that was figured out it is set up now with all the parts for each square/setting triangle in a bag and is ready to be assembled. This is what I find is the fun part of quilting, the putting together without the tedium, and all I have to do is ship it out when the top is pieced and no quilting... I like this!

Dear Fellow Quilters,
I clicked on Bonnie's link that asked me to download some sort of a program. Now remember that I was 16 years old the very first time I heard the word computer. So I downloaded this program. It totally erased my access to this board and many, maybe all of the other boards, that I am on. (chickens, beekeeping, etc.) I am sooooo unhappy. Now how do I fix this. My computer wiz kid joined the military and is now doing cyber security, and for the country now, not just me.
Did everyone else have the same experience?
Marcia

Oh dear -- I'm not sure what program you were asked to download. It sounds to me like maybe you have installed a different browser or something. (Bing, Firefox, Edge, Cortanna, Opera, etc.)

It is possible that you didn't have a PDF (Portable Document File) reader and may have had to download Adobe or another reader. That's ok, but that should be the only program needed to access Bonnie's instructions and it should not have changed anything else.

I’m looking forward to seeing the end results and I will download all the clues, but I am waiting till the end for this one so that I can piece everything using my preferred methods, and I may use different colors. I love her patterns and don’t mind the small pieces and I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone’s color choices and progress!

It's some kind of a web browser and the little house with a tree beside it looks like something from Hansel and Gretel and is most sinister. The ads on this are horrendous and now there is the same green sign at the top asking me to continue downloading aTV Launcher. I don't even have a TV any more. It got struck by lightning. The Lord has spoken.

Ok, Battle Axe, stop the downloads -- unplug your computer if necessary and call the wiz kid. They will want to help. It will probably be pretty simple for them to walk you through a safe start to get you to your old browser and to remove this bad stuff.

Basically I think you got hijacked and tricked and it wasn't really from Bonnie at all. My system is pretty locked down and I've never had anything sketchy come up from her site, but the bad companies are really good at making us click on things we shouldn't...