Quiltville Mystery Quilt – Rhododendron Trail Quilt

Another mystery quilt season has come and gone, and while I didn’t go into the Rhododendron Trail Quilt intending to write about it, like last year when I changed up all of the colors in the Grassy Creek Mystery, I ended up with too many quilt photographs in brilliant colors not to share!

For those of you that are new(ish) around here, this is not my quilt pattern, but Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville releases a one-clue-per-week mystery quilt every winter and it’s so much fun to participate!

I cannot share exact unit or block sizes, and the clues are available for free for just a few more days.  If you are thinking you want to make this quilt, pop over to her blog and save the clues so you can go back to them later.  If you’ve arrived here after the last date to get the clues, I’m pretty sure the pattern can be purchased in her shop, but you made need to check in with her regarding that.

Fabric Requirements

The first clue in a mystery quilt is the fabric requirements.  This year, like the blooms on rhododendrons, we needed pinks, yellows and garnets.  My garnet ended up a little more plum or dark raspberry than garnet (which is my birthstone) and I’m entirely happy with that as reds and maroons are not my favorite colors.

Instead of just white or creams for my neutrals, I went with a large variety of black prints on white fabrics and I’m so glad I did.  It adds a whole fun dimension to the finished quilt.  And, since I made a baby quilt, it will cover up a multitude of dirt and spit up because – say it with me – quilts should be used!

There was also a fabric requirement for aqua, but the directions were a little funny regarding that one, we were told we wouldn’t need it until late in the clues, and that we really needed to be careful picking that one fabric, and that it should be one fabric, not a variety of similar fabrics, so I just set that one on the back burner until I needed to deal with it.

Mystery Quilt Clues

My favorite part of a mystery quilt is the clues.  One clue is released each Friday, starting after Thanksgiving, and I was always so happy to wake up each Friday.  I didn’t get to work on the quilt each Friday, or even every week, but I at least got to see each new clue.

Clue 1 – Half Square Triangles in pink and neutral

I know a lot of quilters aren’t crazy about Half Square Triangles (HSTs), but I love them!  This is my method to make them two at a time, and I also trim them two at a time.

Clue 2 – Flying Geese

I had never before made flying geese with half of the sky fabric in one color and half in another before.  Luckily, making the geese with the 4-at-a-time method naturally led them to be half yellow and half neutral.  Here is a Flying Geese Tutorial to walk you through the 4-at-a-time, no waste way of making these little blocks.

Clue 3 – Triangles

Like I said above, some weeks I didn’t work on my mystery quilt at all and then got caught up later.  Clue 3 was to sew more neutral triangles onto the HSTs from Clue 1.

That week, I got my fabric cut, but not a single stitch was sewn.

Later, I had the time and inclination to make my triangles.

Clue 4 – Quarter Square Triangle Hour Glasses

These are adorable.  Working more with quarter square triangles is still on my to do list.  I wish I had more than two fabrics for my raspberry/garnet, but, it is what it is.

Clue 5 – Totally Off the Rails

Clue 5 was meant to be a pink triangle the same size as the triangle from Clue 3, and then covering the corner with a neutral triangle.  I decided to use even smaller pieces, to mimic Clues 1 and 3 to make my Clue 5 blocks even scrappier.

I highly recommend going off the rails!  My quilt looks different from all the others I’ve seen shared on Instagram, and I like mine better.  Of course I like mine better.

Why did I do it?  Well, we were snowed in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so I had plenty of free time on my hands and it was fun!

Clue 6 – Making A Blocks

I haven’t been around the mystery quilt circuit for long enough to know if this is normal, but this was the first Quiltville Mystery I participated in where the Block A was revealed BEFORE the whole quilt was revealed.

I like to think I had the foresight to know the blocks would be laid out on point, but really, I just wanted some extra green fabric in my background as I was testing driving this green fabric for the aqua that I hadn’t picked out during fabric requirements.

Clue 7 – Making B Blocks

I did not take a single photo of this clue in progress, but the A Blocks from Clue 6 were closely followed up by B Blocks in Clue 7.  These blocks are the reason I’m so glad my neutrals were lots of low volume prints, this would be waaaaaaay too much white if I’d used a plain white.

Clue 8 – The Big Reveal!

I love seeing the full reveal at the end of the mystery quilt.  This is not a quilt I would have ever picked out the pattern to make, but I really enjoyed the whole process and therefore love the quilt.

I had some help rearranging my quilt blocks.  It’s best not to argue with this part of the process.  If the quilt inspector says the quilt does not pass inspection, the quilt inspector is obligated to rearrange the blocks.

And, as you can see, I did end up using the green in place of aqua that I took for a test drive with my A Blocks.  Here in Washington, the Rhododendron is our state flower, and they are so pretty when they bloom, but for 11 months out of the year, they are just green leaves.  How could I not include the green?

Making Changes

In addition to the minor changes I made to Clue 5, I did some adjusting to the border directions as well.  Because the blocks are set on point, the width and length of the quilt are not easy ¼” or ½” measurements like most quilts.  The original pattern used a border piece that was paper pieced that was just the right size to account for the funny measurements. 

Why didn’t I use it?  Well, it was just the right size to account for the funny measurements in a quilt with blocks set 5 by 6.  I made a baby quilt, with just 9 of the A Block, and so the measurement adjustment piece wouldn’t have worked for me.  Instead of creating a new adjustment piece that did work, I made my inner, skinny border a little bit wider, to get my quilt back into whole numbers.

The way I did this – without giving away any of the measurements of the clues – was to measure my quilt’s width and height in a couple of places.  I then did the math to get that funny number up to a whole, round number.  I split that into two (borders on both sides), and then added half an inch to account for the seam allowance.  My inner border ended up getting cut at just under 2” wide.

I think it works though, the extra green helps balance out the large swatches of neutrals.

One Last Mystery

There is still one mystery left.

What color should I use for binding?

My original intention was a black and white stripe. I’ve got lots of options if I go this route…

But, there’s a lot of white in this quilt already.  Does it need something else to frame it?

I could do a scrappy pink binding.  Actually, I probably have enough of the background from the Clue 3 photo to do a binding of just the pink jax.

Or scrappy yellow.

I don’t have enough of either the green or the raspberry/garnet and I’m not looking to purchase more fabric since I have a workable amount of three other colors.

But, of the other options, what do you think?