Battle Axe, I have printed out the introduction to the mystery....and I did not have anything like that happen....I would not click on anymore links with whatever it is you have downloaded.....sometimes hackers are pretty inventive and I have click on innocent looking stuff. Most of the time I have recognized I don't want to go there.....good if you have some computer person who can help you with this....my nephew is an IT person and I will call him when I panick and he usually say as long as I haven't given out any info, I am OK...but one time he did come over and sort it all out.....I do use Norton on my computer also even though my internet provider apparently has a virus catcher too and it has stopped a few things.....sometimes I just shut everything off and restart too....

Thanks for posting Joe'smom. I'm headed to Lowes today. I thought I wasn't planning on it this year but your intro reminds me of how fun it is. May have to jump into this one head first. Maybe with yardage this year.

I do not know if I am going to do the mystery at this point. I do not want to go out shopping as I am old and feeble. But not too old and feeble to give up quilting.....Anyway, I was thinking I did not have enough grey....but without even going up to the attic to look in my attic stash, I managed to find more than half the amount Bonnie said we would need....so, I may just do it....If I find a big enough piece of grey....I just may think of doing everything in one fabric for each color....never have I done that before....

I use the free AD Blocker and it stops all those ads and pop ups on Bonnie Hunter blog site. I wouldn't go to her site without some kind of ad blocker program.

If you have the paint chips or a print out of the paint chips, attach a scrap of the fabric for the colors you’re using to the corresponding paint chip. Then refer to this for each clue.

Battle Axe, I'm so sorry this happened to you! I have seen these download messages interspersed on many quilting websites I go to. I've learned to never click on anything that commands me to download. When we first got our current computer, I was innocently clicking on every download message that popped up, and it completely messed up the computer and we had to get expert help to straighten it out. I hope you can get it all fixed quickly.

I have not tried substituting colors for the winter mystery, but one thing I recall people doing is finding a focus fabric they like and using that to plan a palette. There are also a number of palette websites that I see people referring to for inspiration. I did substitute colors for the Unity quilt using that 3-in-1 color tool Bonnie promotes, and that worked well for me.

With the lack of value contrast between the 5 colors (I'm including gray as one of the colors) and taking Bonnie's photos of her fabrics as a clue, which show a wide range of value, I would say the main thing is that you have good contrast between your neutral and all of your colors, and make sure that whatever represents your gold and orange, that there is good contrast there.

Just pulled the color chips. Here's a clue for everyone on this board. Red, Orange and Green are in Color Pizzazz. White and Gray are in Perfectly Political. Yellow is in Global Spice. Sherwin Williams color are in Collections. If they are out of a particular color, there are smaller color swatches in the brochures at the bottom of each collection. Happy Hunting!

That reminds me! I don't know if this is new because of the covid, but Sherwin Williams will send you the chips for free!

https://colorchips.sherwin-williams....RBMuL5q8L_FeCM

Mkoch, I change the colors every year because I don't want my quilt to look like everyone else's. I always decide on what colors I want to use, then take a black and white picture of Bonnie's chips to determine value and make sure I have the same mix of light, medium and dark values. Most colors can be any of the three, depending on whether it is tinted or shaded.

The other factors I consider is having enough contrast between all colors since I don't know what will be touching in the finished quilt and making sure I really like the color that requires the most fabric, since it will be the dominant color in the quilt. It's a risk but I haven't been disappointed in the result yet and I've done 7 of the MQs. Good luck with your choices. .