A Cruso Quilter: Grand Illusions Mystery

Hey Ya'll!

I'm a bit late with my post, however I have been participating in the Grand Illusions Mystery by Bonnie Hunter. Let me tell you just how much fun this quilt has been to work on.
The journey began in mid-October when Bonnie released her color choices for GI.

Her colors used Valspar Paint Chips from Lowes. I headed over to Lowes and picked up my chips and a couple weeks later I went by J-Creek Fabrics, my absolute favorite LQS around! In her quilt Bonnie used all scrappy fabrics except for the yellow. I chose to use all one color for everything except my neutrals, and only because Janie at J-Creek didn't have enough of my first choice, and I really wanted to use it so I added another to the mix. If you know me any at all, you know that I love lime green and bright blue, so these colors were right up my alley. Once I had the fabrics, we waited until Black Friday for the first clue to come out!

Clue one had me making lots and I mean lots of half square triangles and turning them into Broken Dishes units. Once I finished those, it was off to Clue 2.

Clue 2 took me a while. Pin matching all those points of the Double Diamonds Units was crazy, but hey they're there and almost all of them are perfect. Those that aren't, they are close enough and I'm not ripping them out again. Bonnie gave 3 methods to making these units, and of course I chose the method I had used before just as I did in Clue 1. Using this method I ended up with lots of leftover HST (half-square triangle) units for another project. Those went in my bin of HST for a scrappy quilt to come.

Clue 3, yay! We finally used the green. I love green! These were a cinch to make which allowed me to catch up with Clues 1 and 2 so that I was completely caught up and ready for Clue 4.

Clue 4 looks so much like Clue 1, but when you look close it's not the same. Not as many of these so easy to stay caught up.

Clue 5, wow another easy one. The fewest pieces yet. This brings us up to New Year's at this point.

Midnight on New Year's eve not only rang in 2015, but a surprise post by Bonnie. She had been posting each clue on Fridays, however she decided not to wait any longer and she revealed the final block and layout on New Year's! The block only uses clues 1,2, and part of clue 5. The remaining pieces are used in the final layout, which I am quite behind on. I've had to focus on a quilt I've designed for the challenge competition at A Mountain Quiltfest in Pigeon Forge. The quilt has to be postmarked to Pigeon Forge by Feb. 14 and I barely had anything done. At this point the top is finished and ready for quilting, however I must go today and get my backing fabric, so the last couple of days, I finished the blocks for GI.

Yay, all the blocks are done! Now to get my fabric and quilt my challenge quilt. Once it's submitted to the show, I'll share it with you. Still have a good bit of sewing until I can have the top finished for GI, but I'm so excited to have it done! You'll notice on the right hand side of the page is a link to Bonnie's blog which is awesome and I thoroughly recommend you keep up with her as well, but this links you to the GI mystery. Even though all of the clues are out, I encourage you to download them and make the GI. It is a fabulous quilt and is very fun to make. The clues are only available until early June, when Bonnie takes them down to go in her next book, so unless you want to wait another year to make GI go!