Good Fortune is finished

It's been a long time coming, but I'm very pleased to advise that my Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt from 2018 is finally finished.  It's called Good Fortune. 

I like it, but I wouldn't say that I'm in love with it.  I did learn some useful lessons along the way though; 

- beware of mystery quilts.  This isn't the first time I've said this, but I think I started this quilt before I really learnt my lesson on Jen Kingwell's Marshal mystery quilt. 

- if you're going to change the colours or layout, be confident in your plans and don't let regrets creep in.

I hand quilted it using a range of Aurifil threads in 12wt and 28wt

I changed the layout for this quilt because I thought that the original layout (above) was too traditional for me.  Now I wonder if my white squares would have shown up better in the original layout, but it's too late to go back now, and I'm definitely not making a second version.  

I can now say that I've made a Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt.  I won't be tempted to start another one when I see people starting the next one in November.  I've decided that mystery quilts aren't for me.  

Anna Maria Horner on the back

The finished size is 66" x 66"

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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

Good Fortune - completed flimsy

It's time for the final linkup for Bonnie Hunter's Good fortune mystery quilt.

I've completed my top, but it will be some months before I can hand quilt it.  It's too hot for hand quilting here at the moment.  Summer is in full swing.

When I do get to hand quilt it, I'll be using these beautiful Aurifil threads.  This is Aurifil 12wt and it's what I intend to use on this quilt.

After completing all the blocks for this quilt, I decided that I wanted to change the layout before I sewed them together.  I decided to place my blocks in long strips rather than the chequered pattern designed by Bonnie. I also skipped the extra borders, and went straight for a Tula Pink fabric called Tree of Life.  I feel that the red and yellows in it add extra Chinese influence to the quilt - and the quilt is based on the colours Bonnie saw during her trip to China. 

I'm pleased that I managed to stick with the original colours I picked out for this quilt.


It's been a learning experience making this quilt.  I learnt a lot of quilting tips and tricks along the way, but I also learnt that making a mystery quilt during November and December probably isn't for me .  Next year I will just sit back and watch what everyone else does, and download the pattern after the event if I really like the quilt.

Thank you Bonnie for designing this pattern and running the mystery quilt programme. I'm interested to see how everyone else's quilts look now.  You can view many more on Bonnie's final link up post here.

Peacock Party

It's time for another Peacock Party where you can link up and share what you've been up to.

I've finally managed to get the HTML sorted so you can put a Peacock Party badge on your blog if you wish.  The code is in the sidebar on the right hand side of the screen, just below the Peacock Party image.  You can copy it into an HTML gadget on your blog and the badge should appear and link to my blog.  Let me know if you have any problems!

A big thank you to Yvonne Quilting Jet Girl who helped me out with formatting the code.

Just a reminder about the Peacock Party for those who have started following my blog recently.  It's open to everyone who has a blog post to share.

- I'm not going to tell you that you need to visit and comment on other linked up posts
- I'm not going to demand that you mention my blog in your blog post
- I'm not even going to commit to visiting and commenting on every post myself
- I'm not going to try and sell you anything because I don't have anything to sell
But I am going to provide a welcoming place where fellow bloggers can meet and share what they've been making.  

I've been playing around with my Good Fortune blocks (see my previous post for details), and I've changed the layout.  I've sewn them together like this and I quite like it. 

What have you been up to?




Inlinkz Link Party

Good fortune - Part 7 - The Reveal

Yes, Bonnie has revealed the final layout of the Good Fortune mystery quilt so now we all know what we are aiming for.  Here's mine so far.  Isn't it going to be great?

This is going to be the most traditional quilt I've ever made.  Although Bonnie designed it with memories of her trip to China in mind, it seems very American to me because of the traditional layout of the traditional blocks.  However, my version is very scrappy, and includes a lot of low volume prints, so I'm sort of hoping mine will appear less traditional when it's finished.

This photo is from Bonnie's blog:

I'm also planning my hand quilting so that it will emphasise the tiny white squares running through on the diagonals.  Yes, I do start thinking about my quilting designs while I'm still piecing the top.

Bonnie does a great job running these mystery quilts.  The instructions were perfect, and everything was very clearly explained with photos.  Often more than one method was explained in-case people didn't have a special ruler to do it the first way.

If you would like to make this quilt, you need to hop over to Bonnie's Quiltville blog TODAY and download the patterns for FREE as soon as possible. Bonnie is going to remove them from her website on 1 February, and then you will have to wait to purchase the pattern at a later date.

In case Bonnie is reading my humble blog, thank you Bonnie, it's been a lot of fun.

I'm linking up to Bonnie's weekly link party here.

(You may wonder where my Part 6 is - well I didn't do it because it was optional.  I wanted to see the full layout before I made any optional pieces.)

Good Fortune - Part 5

There hasn't been much quilting at my house this week because we've been celebrating Christmas.  My visitors left this afternoon and I've spent the last few hours making some blocks for Part 5 of Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune mystery quilt (before the new clue gets released overnight).

I love how the blue and yellow look together.  It reminds me of an Adidas track suit I had growing in Dunedin. Blue and gold are Otago's colours!

It's a beautiful day here and we've got the doors and windows open and cricket going on the TV in the background.  Australia are playing India in Melbourne, Australia, and our own Black Caps from New Zealand are playing Sri Lanka in Christchurch, New Zealand.  This is what summer is all about.

I'm just squeezing in to Bonnie's link up before it closes in one hour.  You can read all the other posts here. 

Good Fortune - Part 4

The weeks are flying by in this Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.  We've just had week 4 and I think we've used all the colours now.

I enjoyed using my orange and yellows this week.  I decided to go very scrappy, and used up some of those fabrics that I never know how to classify.  Are they orange? Do the other colours stand out too much? Never, mind, I threw them all into the mix this time.

My little collection of pieced blocks is looking good. I'm keen to find out how these pieces will all fit together eventually.

I'm linking up to Bonnie's Part 4 post here where you can see everyone else's progress too.

Good Fortune - Part 3

It's week 3 of Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune mystery quilt and we're making green chevrons.  I'm not as far along as I was on the previous two clues, but that's OK, because it's a very busy time of the year and I always knew I might not be able to keep up.   

This week we made chevrons (and some bonus HSTs from the off cuts).  I'm certainly learning some new tips and tricks from Bonnie's instructions.  She has provided instructions for multiple ways to make each of the clues released to date.  I like that! We can each choose the method that works for us, but also learn that there are different ways to get the same result.

I do admire the people who have changed up the colours, but my brain just can't cope with that at this time of the year.  I don't want to see Bonnie using red and have to remember that I'm doing green for those sections, and when I see her using green, remember I'm doing blue there.  Maybe in the future, but not this time thank you.

I see all the snow at Bonnie's cabin, and am very grateful that we're going into summer in New Zealand.  Here are some beautiful hydrangeas I've seen in my neighbourhood this week.

and some fairy roses too:

I'm linking up to Bonnie's linky party here where you can see all the chevrons other people have made.

Good Fortune - Part 2

It's the second week of Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune mystery quilt.

This week we made blue and white half square triangles.

Blue is probably my favourite colour, so I had a lots of blues in my stash to chose from.

After seeing all that red dye last week, I decided to prewash the blues too.

I also had a number of low volume prints with hints of blue on them, so I've used up some of them too.

I prefer to make my half square triangles (HST) by cutting squares 1" bigger than the finished size of the block.  I then mark a diagonal line with a ruler, and sew 1/4" either side of it.  I cut down the line and then press the two halves open.  I use my Bloc loc ruler and my rotating cutting board to trim up my HSTs.

Bonnie suggested a couple of methods in her blog post for making HSTs, but I'm comfortable with the method I've been using for some years now.

I'm linking up with Bonnie Hunter's linky party here.  You can see everyone else's progress if you take a look at Bonnie's post on her Quiltville blog.

Good Fortune - a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt

Well, I've taken the plunge and joined the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt band wagon.  This is the first time I've done one of Bonnie's mystery quilts, so I hope it will be fun.

I was seriously tempted to join two years ago for En Provence, but when I read how many pieces were required, I quickly knocked that idea on the head.

However, two years later, and I'm very tempted by Good Fortune and the idea of an Asian inspired quilt.  I haven't been to China, but I have been to Singapore and Japan, so I have experienced Asian culture.

In Singapore in January 2011

I see this mystery quilt as a way to use up some of my fabrics that have been hanging around for a while, and replenish my stocks with new and exciting fabrics.  I want to go scrappy and use lots of tiny pieces of many different fabrics.

Bonnie lists the colours she is using in her blog, but I modified my choices slightly.  I like using this online tool from https://www.sessions.edu/color-calculator/

I put in the very strong red I want to use, and then asked for three other colours that work with it.  So these are the colours that I'll be using.

I'm always wary of red fabrics running, so I prewashed them and I'm so pleased I did.

The top colour catchers are from the first wash, and the bottom from the second.  They are still slightly pink.

After the prewashing I set to and made lots of tiny little blocks - don't ask me the size of the quantity please - you need to go to Bonnie's blog to get all the details.

I'm incorporating a bit of gold into my blocks because I know Chinese people love red and gold together.

This is going to be fun - I'm already looking forward to the next clue release on Friday/Saturday.

I'm linking up to Bonnie's weekly party where you can check out everyone else's colours and blocks.