Quiltville Mystery Quilt Frolic – A Finished Goal

Let the mystery quilting begin! 

For many years, one of my sewing dreams was to make a mystery quilt.  The premise is simple – you get to learn each new step one at a time, so you cannot plan ahead.  It takes away some of decision making, which sometimes makes the process easier, and sometimes makes it harder.

After following Bonnie Hunter online for a while, I knew I wanted to make a Quiltville Mystery quilt.  It’s her holiday tradition, and this year the quilt is called Frolic.  Fabric requirements went out November 1^st, the first clue was given Black Friday, and then one clue every Friday until the full quilt was finished.  Bonnie uses the word clue.  I think of them more as Step 1, Step 2, etc.

Quiltville Mystery Quilt Frolic

Currently all clues are available under the Frolic tab on the Quiltville homepage.  But they are only there for a limited time.  In a week or two, the free clues will disappear, and a for-purchase pattern will be available in their place.  Act quickly, or wait until next November when the next Quiltville Mystery quilt comes out.

The only information given in the beginning of the mystery is the colors and yardage of each.  You know you are going to need this much yardage of these particular colors, but nothing else.  Bonnie gives the fabric requirements in two ways.  There is a photo that inspired her, this year it was April wildflowers in Texas, as well as through paint chips.  I really like the paint chips option, although I didn’t actually go pick them up.  Colors look different on camera, so what I see on the phone or computer screen is not necessarily what she had in mind.  By saying paint chip No. X of a given paint brand, you can pick up the exact color to take fabric shopping with you that she had when she did her shopping.

I intended to shop from my stash and I was largely successful.  This was my first fabric pull.

I felt I had the dark blues, light blues, spring green, aqua and neutrals that were called for.  I didn’t have any raspberry or pink (her exact word was “framboise”) but I did have lots of pretty lavender.

My mom suggested that the lavenders wouldn’t “pop” in the same way as the raspberries, so I let her talk me into going shopping.  Really, she had to twist my arm.  No.  I jumped at the chance to fabric shop and picked up a few raspberries.  I also snagged another dark blue with aqua detailing, to use in the quilt, and to use for binding.

I wasn’t crazy about my spring greens, but I was determined to work from my stash, and just figured I’d plow ahead.

Clue One: Blues and Raspberries

Clue number one was lots and lots of itty, bitty 4-patches made of pinks and an assortment of light and dark blues.  I tried to keep one light and one dark blue in each 4-patch, but we were told to mix and match from both groups without specifics, so a few 4-patches have two dark blues or two light blues.

Now, this is Bonnie’s pattern.  And she wants you to check it out while it’s free on her website, or buy it from her once it’s no longer free.  I cannot (and I will not) tell you the exact sizes or numbers needed for any of the clues.

Clue Two: Raspberries and Neutrals 

They were so quick and easy to make that I worried I may have done it wrong.  These pieces are essentially two rectangles, sewn together on the short end, but unlike other units, I don’t really know what to call them. 

I also didn’t stop to take a photo of these unnamed units.

I’m making about half as many units of each clue as the directions say to make.  The finished quilt size is meant to be 80” by 80” (that’s about a queen-sized quilt) and I don’t need anything that large.  I’m making about half of the units, and aiming to have a quilt that finishes at around 50” by 60” which is a good-sized quilt for a couch throw.

In between clue one and clue two, I went fabric shopping at a Going-Out-Of-Business sale (sad!!!) and picked up some more spring greens as well as a bunch of minty greens.  At this point I panicked.  Grassy or minty?  Minty or grassy?

Many people follow Bonnie’s exact instructions in terms of colors and fabrics.  Others keep it sort of close, but have a slight change to the palette.  Others throw her colors out the window and pick wildly different colors.  I originally intended to stick close to the instructions, but suddenly didn’t know if that was best.

I really couldn’t decide, so I posted a photo and asked my social media followers what they thought.  Friends on Facebook overwhelmingly voted minty, while quilters on Instagram voted grassy.

Guess what, guys?  That was no help at all!

I decided my best bet was to not make a decision and instead to keep my fingers crossed that clue three would not involve green, so that I could push off the decision for another week.

Clue Three: Blues and Neutrals

Clue three was blue and neutral half square triangles!  Woo hoo, I got away with it!  Another 7 days in which to decide.  The concern was less about which color of green looked better (I was all minty, all the way) but more about whether my minty greens were too similar to my aquas. 

This, then, is one of the challenges of mystery quilting.  If the green and aqua would be sewn together, greater contrast is needed.  If both colors are in the quilt but are not side by side, it becomes less important.  You can’t know how or where they’ll be used when making a mystery quilt.

Final decision – the lightest varieties of my minty greens.  This way I get to use the color palette that I liked better, but keep the contrast between colors.

An interesting thing happened with clue three.  I felt that the directions given were a complicated way to make half square triangles, and used larger-than-scrap-size pieces of fabric.  I suggested a two-at-a-time way of making HSTs, and people jumped all over me!  Apparently, other ideas are not welcome in mystery quilting, only the author’s way.  Lesson learned.

Note, it was not Bonnie herself that got on my case, rather it was other quilters who wanted me to toe the line.

I understand that a quilt pattern is proprietary (I write and sell patterns too, I get it!), but was surprised that Instagram was suddenly not a sharing and learning environment when it came to different ways to achieve the same end result.  Especially with something as versatile as half square triangles. 

As a small sampling of options, they can be made one, two, four, or eight at a time.  And those are only four of the methods.  There are more.  There are many more!

Clue Four: Blues and Aquas

Another challenge in mystery quilting is the fabric yardage.  The amount needed is given, but not the specifics.  Will you need long skinny strips?  Or large pieces from which to cut many triangles?  Is just one little scrap of any given fabric enough, or do you need the same fabric to appear multiple times in a block?

My mystery quilting came to a sudden stop with clue four.  The directions were to make four half square triangles and four quarter square triangles from one blue fabric and one aqua fabric paired together.  And then to repeat the process dozens of times. 

While I had the correct yardage of aqua fabric based on yardage alone, I did not have the correct yardage for this particular task.  MY aqua was nearly all long, skinny strips, and that is not the way to make triangles.

This all happened the Friday before Christmas, and I didn’t have all of my gifts completed, so not working on the mystery quilt was probably the best thing that could have happened. 

I got the holiday gifts finished (homemade potholders and reusable grocery bags with shoulder straps, for those of you looking for gift ideas) which was a huge blessing because my house flooded that afternoon and all crafty projects came to a screeching halt while I looked for the source of the flood and researched whether DampRid was pet safe.

I also forgot to take a photo of the handful of Clue 5 units that I did manage to make before putting the clue on the back burner until I could go fabric shopping.  Oops!

Clue Five: More Raspberries and Neutrals

More half-square triangles, this time in raspberry and neutral.  I love half square triangles!

Clue Six: Blues and Greens

Flying into the new year with lots and lots of Flying Geese, we received an “extra” clue on New Year’s Day, in between our regularly scheduled Friday clues.

Just like I love Half Square Triangles, I also love Flying Geese.  Also just like the clue for half square triangles, the clue for Flying Geese was not written in the way I would normally make geese.  I like the 4-at-a-time method, but this time, Bonnie’s directions were better than mine as it led to more control over which way the seam was pressed, to make nestling seams on the next step, easier, which makes the whole quilt lay flatter.

These flying geese units were matched with the blue and aqua pieces in step four, and kept in matching sets.   At this point I had all of Clues 4 and 6 matched and stacked, and started playing around with the layout of units from all of the other clues.  With no idea where the mystery is headed, your brain starts spinning all the possible combinations.

Clue Seven: Raspberries and Blues

This clue was really simple, but a lot of fun.  Raspberry and blue Half Square Triangles, some sewn together and then sewn into pinwheels, some just cut but left unsewn.

The raspberry and blue fabrics really work well together, and I especially liked this pinwheel made of a single print in both colors.

Clue Eight: All The Things!

This clue didn’t involve any new cutting, but took pieces cut in earlier clues and put them together, to make three color flying geese, aqua, blue and raspberry.  I had never made a building block quite like this.  It was a very odd looking unit, but it gave me lots of ideas of how the quilt top could come together.

This was also the point at which I could see how the quilt blocks might come together.  The two ideas are very similar (can you spot the difference?)

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Clue Nine: The Quilt Reveal!

Finally, all of the clues, all of the pieces, and no more mystery!  Let me show you the final quilt top, and then walk you through how I put it together. Here it is, in all it’s glory, my version of the Quiltville mystery quilt frolic!

My original intention was to make a quilt that measured approximately 50” by 60”.  With large blocks, plus sashing, and an on-point setting, those ideal dimensions just weren’t going to work out.

Oh well!  That’s the fun of a mystery quilt, you don’t know exactly what you are going to end up with.

The raspberry/neutral and blue/neutral half square triangles were not to be used in the quilt blocks, but were entirely the borders.  After playing around with the math, I realized my choices were to make less blocks with a border, or more blocks with no border.  I liked the blocks more than I liked the border, so I chose more blocks but no border.

I set the raspberry/neutral and blue/neutral half square triangles aside, and I’ll get to them eventually as I’ve got plans for those bad boys!

Since I had been making about half of the units directed, I had a lot of sewing left to do, as my quilt finished up with about ¾ the number of blocks as Bonnie’s full-size quilt.

Quiltville Mystery Quilt Frolic Blocks

Guess what?!?! I was right when I was playing around with block layout back in clue seven!

This is what all of the block pieces look like when laid out together.

I want to show you how I sewed these blocks together, when there were seams to match with points, like these two squares.

Not only did I check to make sure points and lines matched on the side I was going to sew, I also checked to make sure the points and seams matched up on all 4 sides.

This way I wasn’t only centered left to right, but also top to bottom, in every step of putting the blocks together. 

And there is a finished block!

This quilt also uses sashing, which is a little hard to see once the quilt is all put together, but helps to give the impression of two blocks.   Here is a quick photo of a finished block, with some of the sashing laid out around it.

Now that it’s all said and done, here are a couple of takeaways:

1. Yes, I will do another Quiltville Mystery quilt.  Absolutely!
2. Yes, I will make another version of Frolic, now that I know how all of the pieces go together.  I’m thinking purples, dark and light grays, and all of those darker minty greens that I didn’t use before.
3. Others quilters were smart enough to realize that they didn’t have to put their blocks together on point.  I hadn’t even thought of that, until after I had made the half square and quarter square blocks needed for setting on point.  Oh well!  Next time. 
4. I want to rethink how I write patterns.  Just because I put blocks together in a particular way (2-at-a-time Half Square Triangles or 4-at-a-time Flying Geese for example), doesn’t mean that it’s the way that is best in a given moment.  I need to reset my thinking to be “how would someone reading this pattern do it?” rather than “how would the pattern writer do it?”

Now, hurry, hurry on over to Quiltville.  Get the clues to Frolic while they are still available for free download.

Also, hurry, hurry to take quilt photos.  I was lucky enough to get a break from the rain to snap some #quiltsinthewild photos, but a tiny bit of wind and a whole lot of gravity meant quick photos before the quilt fell onto the still wet grass.

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