Grassy Creek top done!

It has taken awhile, but I am finally ready to share photos of my completed Grassy Creek quilt top, the 2020 Bonnie Hunter mystery.

Grassy Creek, 64" x 79"

When I finished the top, we were going through a stretch of far too many grey, rainy days to get good outdoor photos. I tried taking some photos indoors first, and this was the best of the lot. The colors are more true in the previous photo.

This mystery was one of the extremely rare instances where I chose to use the same colors for the quilt as the designer. I liked Bonnie's fall inspiration and had been wanting to make a quilt with those colors. My biggest change was using a single grey fabric instead of scraps and strings for the grey areas.

There were some adjustments to my color palette that happened along the way. After Bonnie revealed the finished quilt in January, I put together some blocks and sashing units, then put them all together on the design wall. That's when I realized that my fall color scheme had wandered off track.

Bonnie's design used "parakeet" yellow-greens, which to my eye looked much too bright for fall colors. Of the blocks I had made, only the one at the top left of the previous photo seemed right. I ended up rejecting or remaking the rest of the blocks and most of the nine-patches. Here is my second attempt at the blocks, which made me much happier.

It is always a good feeling to finish the piecing on a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt. Anyone who has done one of her mysteries knows from the outset that there will be many small pieces, and string piecing is frequently included. I skipped the string piecing on this one, using a single grey fabric instead, and that saved lots of time. Here is a closer look at the assembly of part of my quilt.

The size of Bonnie's finished quilt was 94" x 94", and it has 25 blocks in it. I considered making the whole quilt, but wasn't ready to commit to that at the beginning. I started out making about 2/3 of each of the units in Bonnie's instructions, but ended up using only 12 blocks in my version. The finished size of my top is 64" x 79".

After the center of the quilt was together, I searched my stash for an appropriate border fabric. I wasn't having much luck until I ran across this leafy sunprint that was leftover from backing an earlier quilt. These are the colors that say fall to me.

I have one last photo to share--the stained-glass look with the quilt top hanging over the deck railing.

For anyone interested in making Bonnie's Grassy Creek quilt, the mystery clues have been taken down from her blog. However, it is available as a pattern booklet from her Quiltville store HERE.

Linking up with:

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA