2016 Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt--"Allietare"

The day after Thanksgiving brings a new mystery quilt to Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog.  This year it's called Allietare. She posts the colors she is using and the amounts needed of each color. Then each Friday there will be clues to make a quilt using the assembled fabrics. This will be the 3rd Bonnie mystery quilt I've done.

This year I wanted to use the colors of the Maryland flag for my quilt (Red, White, Yellow, Black) so I was hoping she chose a 4 color quilt. I thought it would be fun to do a DIFFERENT color way than what Bonnie chose. Well! Bonnie's colors this year are: Red, White, Yellow, Black.....and Grey. So OK fine I'll use her colors because they are MY colors. But I've chosen to use only ONE fabric of each color instead of making a scrappy quilt. These are my fabrics and I think they all play nicely together.

The first clue had us making lots of HST (half square triangles).

Remember the trouble I had with the HST border of the last quilt I worked on?

I was very accurate in the piecing of these units.

I put a bunch of them on my design wall to admire and photograph.

Now they are all packed into a baggie as I await the next clue.

For this week Clue 1 is done!

Linking to Finish It Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Back to Quiltville Monday Link Up.

Holiday Lights---From UFO to Quilt Top!

I purchased this "Holiday Lights" quilt kit from the Quilt Vine in Trappe, MD last November. This was my Black Friday splurge and I did it over the phone! They mailed it and I started putting it together until I had problems...... Then it sat in a UFO (UnFinished Object) box for most of the year.

"Holiday Lights" (48" x 52") was designed by Alex Anderson.

The Quilt Vine tweaked it and sold the kit and pattern along with their changes.

The kit came in a clear box with a color photo. 

I LOVE the neutrals they chose for the background in this quilt.

I would never have been so daring to choose the red and green dot fabric as a neutral.

This was my problem. My half square triangle border didn't fit.

It was too short because my seam allowance was a hair too wide.

PLUS I pieced all the green triangles pointing the same way.

The top and bottom borders need to have them point the other direction. OOPS!

There was NO WAY I was going to use a seam ripper and undo all that sewing.

So I thought about using a tan fabric for the inner border instead of the triangles.

But I do like the triangles so I just added extra bits of fabric until it fit.

This is the original pattern and all the little lights ready for appliqué.

To make appliqué easier I sewed the green fabric to all the colors and then cut the bulbs as one piece.

One border at a time gets ironed and appliquéd while the rest is rolled up.

One cute Sponge Bob bulb!

And I've got "Whos" from Whoville on a tree or two.

Yay!! No longer a UFO!

I may try to machine quilt some snowflakes on this quilt. It already isn't perfect because I messed up the triangle border and therefore the outside border didn't match up with the inner border but really who cares? Right? I still love this quilt. GREAT fabric choices from the Quilt Vine! Thanks!!

Linking to Finish It Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.