Great job, Tweety! I'm so impressed with anyone who has managed to complete all of the main blocks already. It's been slow going for me, but I'm not in a rush. I've had to re-do a few components because they didn't measure up in size. That has held me back. That and my back issues.

Leslie

Hello everyone! I have been slowly working on mine. Just finished clue 7 today and started a few on clue 8. I love seeing everyone's work come together. Not so sure about my color choices this year. But to late to go back now. I substituted yellow for aqua and orange for the raspberry. But all the other colors I kept and in the same position as Bonnie's so will be bright. I chose my colors from a list of my daughter's favorites. As soon as I have a block made I will post may be awhile working full-time nights has really cut into my sew time.;)

I think it will be great, Frustratedquilter. If I can envision it, like suns with stars in them :) Since it isn't too late for you just make sure that the yellow and orange contrast with value as well as color, my Parakeet/Yellow would have been fine with a bit more contrast but yellow/green alone at the same value wasn't enough for success.

Hubby stayed home sick from work today, unfortunately for me I keep his schedule better then he does so I'm up early and although he says it doesn't bother him, my sewing room is on the other side of the wall from the headboard so I try not to work in there while he's sleeping. But I sort of have to, I didn't sew those border units yesterday so am out of pins until I do.

I have some cutting I can do, more of the darker yellows to replace the lighter/more difficult ones I culled out and the newly defined additional Parakeets that will be the center of my sashing strip. A year or so ago I moved around my various work stations, I used to sit in my chair in my sewing room and turn from machine to desk/layout to ironing board. In order to get more steps in, my ironing board is now in the living room and my cutting station is the dining room table. It helps to have a very tolerant hubby, but I get a ton more steps in now each day than I did before and typically for cutting and ironing I'm standing. I don't believe in calorie counting for weight loss but I do believe in more physical activity, we might not get a lot from quilting but I feel like I've made it as active as I can.

Tweety, your blocks are looking great!

Carol, I liked that first photo with the plain sashing, but I think any of those options would work well.

I'm thinking this might be my favorite Bonnie block of all the ones I've made. I found the Good Fortune chevron block frustrating because I could not figure out how to match that seam, but I'm not having an issue with any of the units this year, and I love those nesting geese.

I'm hoping to finish up my half blocks today. My plan is to then quickly (ha!) put together the main block corner and geese units and then put them aside for, I hope not too long so I can finish up an En Provence I've been avoiding.

joe's mom- I looked up En Provence. It's a lovely design.

Looking back, it now seems like a very tame mystery compared to our wild clues this year, LOL.

Well, I got my Parakeet Sashing strips and extra Yellow/Neutrals cut while hubby was sleeping. I waited as long as I could and started sewing at the point he would usually be at work.

My first replacement block went well, I had the units stacked up and put together the subunits, so had already sewn most of the block and found the last one of my Aqua/Parakeet combos was one of the worst ever Funky Monkey! So no net gain on using that block to replace another block with errors, but I like the color combo better so I guess that Monkey is staying in.

I thought when we were making the subunits with the 4-patch, that they all went the same way. But then when I was working with the corner setting units that warped my fragile little mind and I couldn't get the twisting right. So no, I didn't need to make them in mirror image sets so long as I'm making them all into the subunit. It's working ok with my mirror images, but that was basically unnecessary.

I haven't pressed the border units yet, my goal is to take them to group next Tuesday to pin together into sets of 4, so I'm going to put that off for now.

I am, however, going to take a break from the setting/replacement blocks and sew my sashing units before they get more twisted around. That was one of the clues where I made too many because I had some random number in my head. I am going to keep all the darker reds in this round of connections, then count up what I have left and take out as many of the pinks and color-shifting into yellow that I can.

I'm forgetting who posted the picture, but one I could see the reds dance around in a circle more than in the others and I rather like that, so am going to put some emphasis where/when I have the chance.

I agree!!! :)

I can certainly relate...I finally got my machine back from its annual maintenance and checkup and have had a hard time jumping back into my BH mystery. Yesterday I pulled it out and worked for about an hour, I think I’m Clue 7. I’ve decided to dedicate 4 hours a week on it.

So many wonderful looking blocks being posted...Janie, wildyard and Tweety included. I am still in awe of the work Iceblossom has put into this project.
Carol, thank you for sharing your sashing/layout ideas.

I'm up in the middle of the night again and about to embark on an estimated 2 hours of pressing which might be enough to send me back to bed. Maybe it will be less, I can't imagine it more. I have all my sashing pieced now and those border units.

I'm using the same piece for all my sashing cornerstones, it's a darker tone of the mossy green I've redefined as my Parakeet. There is a lot of variation in it, it will fit in tonally with my medium colors I used for blue, but be slightly different because of the grayish tone of the green, I did use more forest and jade tones in my dark/medium blue group. Anyway, I'm a pinner and for many good reasons. Since I'm able to use a strip and not individual blocks, and these sashing units are so narrow I don't need pins I thought -- I sewed a red/neutral unit/space all along the length of the strip. I put on exactly the first 2 correctly and the rest (one for each block) was upside down. Argh! I would have caught it pinning.

It's why I do prefer assembly line style assembly, although it does leave me open to the very real possibility of doing every single seam or cut or whatever wrong (which does happen but not often), it also lets me catch the "ones not like the others" which do happen often by the way I consistently place and stack my units. I can tell right away if the front is correct, and then I put together about 4-5 of whatever unit I'm working on, flip them over, and then put them into the done piles. I do prefer to count them up as units as I go, again easier for me to catch a mistake when I have 6 stacks of 12 rather than a pile of 72.

I'm going to go grab that last small handful of hand dyes that need fixing, maybe I can get a picture of the completed stack later today or tomorrow. I still see the first quilt I saw in the bag, this Frolic mostly used the brighter colors. And then last night I think I saw the third quilt in the bag, some contrasting dark radiating hand dyes in a Lonestar with a dark background, there are some really great purples.

I've also chosen a correspondingly bright fabric for the back of Frolic... there will be no dark side!

No dark side. Words to live by. I'm still not up to climbing something to clear up space on the working wall so my block is still there all lonely in the margin :) But am so enjoying seeing the progress here. Still the doyden, but creeping up on hoyden :) I know she is in there...

Woohoo! Poor sick Hubby has gone back to work and so I have my design surface to use again.

First shot, rough layout because I always have a hard time visualizing bed size from block size. So there is the top unstitched on a queen sized waterbed frame. It will tighten up a bit, but those blocks falling off the sides are not setting triangles, they are the full blocks and no borders yet!

The close up shows my new Parakeets I am using in the sashing, should have replaced all my closer-to-Bonnie's paint chip with this tone when I switched my neutrals to yellow. Not ever going to be entirely happy unless I rip out my previous pale greens and yellow and that just isn't going to happen, but I'm ok with this. The change makes it a little "blockier" in my opinion -- some people are getting marvelous circular effects.

Picture three shows the bright back with some squares up top... That's 8 yards of Alexander Henry southwestern cowboys and native americans with cactus and mountains in the background. For me it was a huge extravagant purchase, $24 for one piece of fabric... usually $20 fills my back seat.

Edit: Forgot the bit about no dark side/words to live by. Whenever I layout a project I remember a moment with a friend who I helped with a layout. She stood back and there was this little sigh and she said: It's so nice when you don't hate it.

Let's all have a day of not hating :)

Iceblossom - all I can say is ! That is amazing and I continue to marvel at all the time and work you put into the fabric dying and designing. It is truly beautiful and should win "Best of Show" award. Your backing fabric is so perfect in picking up the colors from the front.

Lovely !!!!! Your " Western " Frolic is delightful !

Iceblossom- that's amazing!!!!!!!! YOur hard work is certainly paying off.
A side note here- my youngest son gave me an awesome Christmas gift- a scarf that he hand dyed. I should post a pic. It's beautiful! He said it was so much fun to make.

Iceblossom, you must be so pleased. This pattern leant itself perfectly to a bright neutral, and all of your hard work has paid off brilliantly! Your quilt is so beautiful, and I love that bright backing!

As I would say on a gaming forum /blush (the / denotes an action). Thanks for the nice comments. Susie, I'd love to see pictures of the scarf. My mom who does watercolor paintings did some lovely work with silk scarves and a particular type of ink.

The thing is that home dying can be done by any of us, often with only the things we have on hand. Everything else pretty much can be bought at a 24-hour Walmart! Look for the tie dye section in the craft aisle. So if you have a dark piece scrap leftover, maybe think to yourself -- I wonder what would happen if I made a paste of my sink scrubber (the type that already includes bleach, you don't want to mess much with bleach unless you know what you are messing with), and brushed it on with a toothbrush... You start with wet fabric, btw, and check it about every 15 minutes in case there is a fast reaction and just let it dry if there isn't. Nice thing with bleach processes is all you have to do is rinse it out, no need to set! Or you have a floral that's just a bit too pale or too bright, well, most of us have a microwave and a few tea bags around.

When you dye your own fabrics, you know what you used and therefore you know how to set it. I didn't know with this bag, I was really surprised by how much the dye ran when the pieces had been starched. /boggle!

I'm sure some of it is rayon especially the binding, I don't stress about it if I can't tell for certain by my usual tests. Years ago I made a quilt out of clothing scraps, one of those was a bright piece of beautiful rayon sun dress and it held up better than some of the "new" cottons. But the thing is the processes/chemicals used for rayon and cotton are different.

Since I didn't know what was done, most of what I've really been doing is heat setting a stain and removing the excess dye. But yeah -- if I hadn't been stuck in the house without a working car, I would never have managed my way through this full bag. At one point my hubby asked me, so are you still going to do that easter egg boiling some more or have you "gotten everything you wanted out of that project" yet? (It's so cute when they use your own phrases against you!) Unfortunately for him, although I had everything I needed for Frolic I was only half way through the bag.

The bag originally was $7.99 at the thrift store, I paid full price for it. I've spent approximately $40 on supplies, including red and yellow dyes, but mostly setting fixatives and vinegar, didn't add in the cost for the plastic wrap. I'd say I put in a good 40 hour work week on it, which included multiple loads of laundry and gallons of water. Don't know what it sells for and I'm not selling this, but I'm putting "my" cost on this at about $20/yard. Surely a trip to the store would have been cheaper and less time/resource intensive.

Love the blocks and layouts being posted! I have all my blocks finished except I am short one which I have to create yet. I am starting sewing the sashings today. Since I am going with the horizontal layout, I have lots of leftovers that were meant for the corners and side triangles.
I have a couple blocks with lower contrast, and I'm very happy with the rest. I'll just put them in the bottom section where they won't be noticed as much. LOL
Here are photos of the 19 blocks I have finished.
I won't get much done today as I have dentist appt. then the gym if I'm feeling up to it. There's always tomorrow for sewing!

Iceblossom and wildyard: Very pretty blocks!

wildyard, I love your blocks!

Argh, I spent a long time pinning the last seams on the half blocks today, and then sewed six of them with no bobbin thread. So I have to re-pin and sew those tomorrow. Here are the six I sewed with bobbin thread.

Loving those neutrals instead of my eye blasting yellows!

Those darn bobbins. Yesterday I was tempting fate with my "It's all fun and games until the bobbin runs out" t-shirt but I didn't jinx myself this time. It helps that I finally found the package of extra bobbins for my Brother and so I can wind extras and not be at the mercy of just one bobbin. Speaking of being at the mercy of... I pulled out one of the new bobbins and was having a terrible time getting the thread through the hole in the top. Now, with my vision issues I often have problems but this was worse than usual. So finally I got out my seam ripper to check -- and sure enough, there was still a little film of plastic still closing over the hole even though you could clearly see where the hole was. Once that was poked out it worked much better.

Today's goal is to finish the extra blocks/setting units and then to pick which blocks stay and which get cut into setting triangles. I've been thinking maybe the thing to do is instead of doing the full blocks first, maybe I should see if I can expand any of the other sets of the setting triangles to make them into two units and then I won't have to worry about slicing any of them. The ones I want to turn into full blocks I want because of colors or other reasons.

I'm so weird, I don't mind having extra orphan blocks at all, but having those left over cut/semi-pieced units bothers me.

Wow, I don't mind saying I had some real cognitive issues trying to put those setting triangles together while making two out of each cut set instead of one. The four corners were easy but I kept trying to make those instead of halves. Took me a long time to get my first set done, but I'm moving along now. So it looks like I won't have to actually cut any of my blocks if I don't want to but that I will have entire blocks left over. But it's going to take me at least another day to get my blocks and setting triangles done.

But -- I am done at last with the hand dyes. Here are spread out views and a stacked view in it's original bag next to one of my boxes of fabric. It's basically a box left now. I have the yellows and reds up top in case I want to dive back in there but I should be pretty well done cutting stuff now.

The last two shots are the binding fabric, pre-washing with the goodwill tag that says I spent less than $2.00 almost exactly a year ago, and the washed out but still cool end result.

joe’smom: Very pretty half blocks.

Iceblossom: I’m amazed at your determination in dyeing those fabrics. They are very pretty.

IceBlossom, I went backwards from you.

Started putting half blocks together and realized that there was no way I was going to have the luck to get 4 matching aqua geese, 4 matching blue geese, the right aqua HST, etc., so put the sashing together, cut one set of each combo, cut some blue/raspberry HST for the pinwheel and just made another block.

Figure I can get the 4 corner blocks out of the leftovers. The setting and corner triangles try my patience, because you can’t just out the pedal down and sew.

So finally, tomorrow, I can start putting rows together. Then measure for what I call the stop border—the border to bring the quilt center to the right size for the pieced border to fit. If tomorrow can be as productive as today, may almost have a top by the end of the weekend.

I need some help.

I have my 25 blocks almost finished. I now realize that the other blocks make the alternating design. Good so far.

My confusion is with those setting blocks. Since we were supposed to make 25 blocks where are the blocks for these other ones? Does anyone follow me here? I have tons of fabric leftover. So do I just make more or what? These instructions are all blurring together!!

It is confusing!

The setting triangles are made from those other sets we put together but didn't make pinwheels back in step 6.

The really confusing thing (to me) is we basically cut out a whole entire block and sewed subunits for that block but we are only using a portion of them. It might help to go back a few pages and see what I had left over, I'll try and get a link to that.

I don't want to confuse you further, but it bothered me to have all those unused units and so I figured out what I had to do to get 2 setting triangles from each set of a single block.

Edit: Here is where I started processing the concept and construction of these setting triangles. A step I am still on! But I made life harder on myself than it had to be.
https://www.quiltingboard.com/8355004-post1241.html

Iceblossom- thank goodness you were here when I posted!!!!!!! Thanks so much :)

I have found that a lot of the mystery has been fun, but not all of it lol
I'm thinking of doing En Provence. It doesn't look nearly as confusing.
Maybe............

You'll have half of them in reverse. But if you like to make scrappy quilts and have extra fabric, consider making them the 4 at a time method but make double the amount. Other than that, I have no idea. For that clue I did use Bonnie's method except I cut the wings triangles larger and trimmed down. Starching will help when working on the bias as well.
ETA: Oops! I meant sky triangles. Always want to call them wings for some reason.

Iceblossom - fabulous colour combinations. Wow! I haven't touched this quilt for over a week. Had planned on getting the Cuts and Bolts mystery done, but another quilt intervened. I'll get back to it eventually, but am planning on doing a straight line arrangement and do away with the half blocks.

I found it really helped me to first assemble my subunits together and then it went much better when I laid them out on a finished block instead of looking at my block (even though I had it all set up in the same direction and everything). Once I got that first corner unit figured out, laid out the other 3 on it. The corner was the easiest for me. I went ahead and made 4 matching corners because I could easily find the fabric to do that.

Same thing for the half blocks, I had a terrible time until I actually just put the pieces on a finished block. I kept trying to make quarter units. Once you have that weird rough shape to follow, it gets easier.

Kudos to anyone who found it easy the first time! I don't mind using full blocks and trimming when I do a diagonal set, that's going to be really weird to some of you. But for whatever reasons, the twisting and turnings of these simple little HST is twisting my head.

After working so long on the half blocks, I spent yesterday experimenting with the idea of using regular setting triangles instead, in the medium blue color. Even if I should decide to go that direction, I don't consider the work on the half blocks a waste, because they led to switching out some full blocks for the half blocks, plus I learned alot about matching the seams.

There are lots of interesting border treatments and colorways showing up on Quiltville.

joe'smom- where are you seeing them? I can't find any.

Over on the right of the main body of posts, there is a link that says 'recent group photos,' and if you click on that, you can see all photos posted to the group. I also scroll through the posts a couple of times per day, as it seems that some photos don't end up in that 'recent photos' section.

I was at a quilt work day with some of my guild members and all who are making the BHMQ mentioned the amount of extra unused pieces. This is disappointing to find out that as many as 30 plus extra unused pieces are not used . :(

I thought some of Bonnie's comments in the clues showed she was aware of how upsetting this would be to some people, but said she didn't see how she could have presented the clues in such a way as to prevent it -- they were confusing enough as it was. Personally, I don't mind because it was so much fun and I really love the block.

My sewing went very well today on the corner and geese block units. I only had to adjust a few geese units. I'm hoping to finish with them tomorrow.

I took a break from this quilt for a week, started sewing on it again yesterday. I am still having trouble matching up the points around the flying geese. Even when I take the time to carefully pin and clip properly, my machine will still distort the seams sewing over all that bulk. I had to take one seam apart and put it back together six times yesterday to get something acceptable. Very frustrating, because i am not sure if my troubles are something I have done or if my skills just aren't up to par.

Geese are tough, Origami. Hang in there. But in general, I have lot of reasons on why I like cutting large and trimming down. The waste is tiny compared to the huge gains in accuracy (and speed). I find that if I concern myself more with the base the points will take care of themselves most of the time. Even with my over-sized pieces and that all my pieces at least fit, I have about 90% good blocks, 5% ok, and 5% are those noticeable Funky Monkeys.

As for the extra pieces? There were all sorts of ways it could have been prevented. It takes basically 6 inches more fabric to turn those single use blocks into two. Barely anything to make the four corner units out of one block instead of 4.

All this to deliberately try and make people think "oh, there are likely to be pinwheels spinning in the opposite direction in the other blocks"? I don't think much of that excuse.

Overall I was very happy with this project (minus my own Parakeet issues -- but let's just mention her paint chip is the background of that and not the predominant color of what she herself picked). But no way am I prepared to waste the time or fabric to just throw away blocks worth of effort. It isn't just a couple of pieces. Lay out those leftovers, it's basically six fully wasted blocks.

I'd rather make the efforts I'm making now and have more choice out of those I am using in the top. I understand my decision to make the extra units to make the blocks is not what most people are going to do. I think most people are going to have "more usable" fabric in those than my project.

But enough grumbling, I still have another two little pieces of fabric to find if I can to make one more set of the setting units. Would have been so easy to match if I had used prints. Again, I think the people who used yardage came out very well this time. I was actually very pleased with this project -- until the waste happened. And that can be designed out/better next time.

Edit: You can't please everyone, but this amount of waste was a bad call by Bonnie. It's a yard of fabric. Pull out 6 of your completed blocks, look at them and throw them away! That's what this wasteful setting set-up did, and it offends me deeply.

re: extra pieces left over.
as more people get further along on the facebook quiltville studio group I'm seeing many posts about leftover bits.
And oddly enough they seem (in my foggy mind) to run about 1/2 and 1/2 with many people saying they only have a few leftovers. One of those life mysteries!

Love everyone's blocks. I have done a few of BH Mysteries and always have had leftover pieces. But turning lemons into lemonade, I just make more and make a pillow sham or two. It really works great since I usually make twin size and throw size. I also have made extra blocks and run a vertical strip of the pattern down the back.

It's all about perspective, Kalama! Probably as many (or more even!) people were glad that they didn't actually have to make blocks as were upset about the end waste.

I do modern strip piecing techniques. There is a certain amount of waste in that. There is a certain amount in my cutting large.and trimming down, but less than just what is left over from the end of a strip that doesn't get used up. Typically I use less fabric than one extra row of cutting correctly.

I don't mind making units and slashing through them for the setting, again, I do that sort of thing all the time. That's not the waste that bothers me. But unless I've done something really wrong (which includes making bad choices), I don't just cut up fabric to sew it and then discard it and that's what I'm objecting to. It was a bad use of my time in addition to my material.

For those that are fans of Bonnie's style or construction techniques, well, yeah, they are nice little HST units or whatever and I'm sure you can do something with them eventually. Again, not so much for me with my fabric selections and my style of quilting, and they do not have a place at all in my storage system -- other people are equipped to deal with such things.

My current theory is if the fabric doesn't get used up in the current project, out it goes! I am going to be able to use those leftovers and half blocks in the back, and I'm going to have blocks to pick and choose my layout. But no, this whole pile of trims and pieces and deliberate over-cuts in addition to my own counting mistakes and mis-cuts/redone pieces is going out the door when the top is done. (Or I think it is, haven't heard yet from my crumb quilter if she wants these trimmings, she's mostly been gone since the board redesign).

For me the equivalent of 6 blocks that I've already partially completed is a huge amount. To others not so much. It's not even the wasted fabric, I have plenty of fabric, but for others a yard is a significant amount of fabric/cost. I quilt for fun, but I don't do it for no purpose, there was no real purpose for this other than to fool me and to waste my time, energy and fabric. Again, I don't accept that but I'm going to figure it will be better next time.

Edit (if I came back in time): I'll have to go back through the beginning, but if this sort of thing is going to be used in the future, a "warning: there will be enough leftover sewn/cut units for a baby quilt" would be good for me to know in advance. The mystery can stay alive until we know what is used. And then as an extra gift maybe a plan for the scraps. They are definitely usable.