Has anyone decided to use BH's colors, EXCEPT for the black? What are you using instead? That just seems like a lot of black to me.

Michelleoc--I am leaning towards using a navy in place of black. I love the yellow, teal, green and pink but do not like to use black. I wont really decided until I see some of the pieces come together to get a better idea of the block design. If the design didn't call for black, I would be happy to follow along as a mystery but I'm not comfortable with forging ahead with black.

I popped into this thread and now I want to give it a try! But....I don't really understand what a Mystery Quilt is? Can someone point me to or give me a good description? I did read through the intro on Bonnie Hunter's site and, since it was on the way from picking up my DD from school, stopped at a Lowe's for the colour chips.

Steps are given for the quilt one a a time but you don't know what the final quilt will look like. I think you have to be familiar with the designer so you can decide if you like his/her style. Check out Bonnie's website www.quiltville.com to see some of her quilts. There are a couple of her past mysteries on the free patterns tab but most of them have been retired and put into her books.

This will take you to images of past mystery quilts. They look challenging!

Gosh, those are quite intricate! I may not be up for this...but I guess I won't know until I try.

With regard to fabrics, the ones I've seen in this thread are all scrappy. Does anyone think using Kona solids for the six colours would work out? I'm leaning in that direction, as my stash is light on these colours.

Bonnie said in the intro, that the quilt would work using just one fabric for each color. If six blenders will work, I don't see why six solids wouldn't. It would just be a different look. But let's see what someone with BH experience thinks.

miss_sonja: come on, join in. I've never done a mystery quilt either. Her quilts do look very challenging but I'm looking at it as learning new skills. As for using solids, I think that would be really nice. It makes me think of the peacefulness of Amish quilts.

So, to those of you that have done MQ before, any tips for us newbies?

I think there are going to be a lot of us first-timers this year. I'm also going to do it--a first time mystery quilt. I've never done mystery quilts before because I always wanted to know what pattern I was doing before I started.