Past Bonnie Hunter Mysteries

I'm SO excited for this year's mystery. Clue one has come out, and the fun has started already.  In prepartion for this, I tried to finish up some of my previous mysteries. The tops generally get done, but quilting sometimes gets pushed to the bottom of the list.  This summer, I finished a couple of recent ones.

First, En Provence. This was the 2016 mystery. I used Bonnie's colours, although I went with single fabrics rather than her scrappy choices. I did pull in a second neutral, so that I could play with the 4-patches she filled the background/borders with, and I'm glad I did. It really adds to the quilt.

Last year was "On Ringo Lake". I decided to do this one in Christmas colours, so I found a great fabric with colours I liked, and based my colour selections on that. Once again I did not do scrappy, and when she pieced the background, I stuck with a single fabric. I did make a minor change to her outer border, because I wanted the green squares to look finished. Other than this, this first quilt is as she designed it (in a smaller size). I wanted a throw that could be in the living room for the Christmas season.

The leftover blocks went into a second quilt, which will be donated to Victoria's Quilts. The colours are not "in your face" Christmassy, so I hope it will be loved by someone all year round.

I have 3 extra blocks after all this. One will be the pocket on the bag for the donation quilt. And the other two are going to be pillows to match my quilt.  The pillow fronts are done, just need quilting and then I can assemble the pillows.

I have done every Bonnie Hunter mystery since Orca Bay in 2011.  I stumbled onto her mysteries through a Monday Design Wall linkup that year.  For some reason, suddenly at the end of November everyone was doing the same quilt :)  So I checked it out and jumped in with both feet.  I have done them all since then. And the original is the reason I bought a longarm, so I keep it as a reminder of that.  Here are my quilts - one (Celtic Solstice) is missing because I donated it, but I've kept the rest.  Only Easy Street still needs quilting - the rest are complete.  From left to right: Orca Bay, Easy Street, Grand Illusion, Allietare, En Provence, and On Ringo Lake.