Good Fortune (and the Peacock Party)

Remember that Good Fortune quilt that I started in the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt sew along last year? Well, I've finally started hand quilting it.

I like to use lots of colours of thread in my hand quilting

I know Bonnie is currently leading a tour group through Kenya, but I also know that as soon as she's back in the USA she will be announcing her next mystery quilt.

I will NOT be joining in the next mystery quilt.  Don't laugh - I will be strong.  I have enough on my plate at present without diving into something else.  I enjoyed making Good Fortune and being part of a large world wide group working on the same quilt, but I don't need to do it again in a hurry.

I actually find mystery quilts a bit challenging, because I like to plan my fabrics a few steps ahead.  I'm keeping up with the Jen Kingwell Marshal mystery quilt in QuiltMania, but I'm not going to sew step 5 until I see the final layout and know how the arcs on part 5 fit in.

Anyway, back to Good Fortune.  I know Bonnie will host a big link up party in February and anyone can link up any of her mystery quilts that they have finished since the last link party.  I would love to have this quilt finished by then and included in the link up.

I want to keep the quilting quite simple on this quilt.  There are a lot of seams due to all the tiny pieces, and I want to avoid them as much as possible. It's tough on my hands pulling the needle through bulky seams. 

On the orange and red sections I'm going to quilt diagonally across the block, and then in the ditch around the central square.  I'll also quilt in the ditch around the edge of each of the blocks.  I'll do all this quilting in 28wt Aurifil because it's thinner and doesn't compete with the busyness of the block.

12wt Aurifil looks great here

On the blue and green blocks I'm going to quilt 4 straight lines down the centre of each column in 12wt Aurifil, and one line down the centre ditch in 28wt Aurifil.  I'll use thicker thread here so it shows up more. The outside lines will be in blue thread, and the inside lines will be in green thread.  The central line with be in white so it's not too obvious.  I love including lots of colours in my quilting.

28wt looked too thin for this area

Comparing 12wt and 28wt - it's hard to see in this photo

If I'm uncertain about something, I never pull out my stitches until I have another option to compare against.  I stitched a different area with 12wt and decided that it looked better, so now I'll go back and pull out the 28wt.

So, I have a plan now.  I don't always have a master plan before I start.  I just put in a few stitches and see how it looks.  If I think it needs more, I add more.  If I don't like it, I try a new idea and then pull out the original stitches.  There's always so many options, so it all comes down to personal taste, and how much time you want to spend on a quilt.  I'll keep you posted on progress.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post, AND feel free to link up any finished Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilts you have - or any good Fortune quilts still in progress.  If you've got more than one of Bonnie's mystery quilts, link up multiple times.  Lets motivate each other to get these mystery quilts finished in time for the big link up in February.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter