Quiltville Mystery Quilt 2016: The Reveal!

Just like the last few years, Bonnie Hunter is sharing her annual mystery quilt on her blog Quiltville. This year it is called En Provence! I participated the last couple years with Grand Illusion and then Allietare and really enjoyed the process. I've shared my weekly progress on clue #1, clue #2, clue #3, clue #4, clue #5, and clues #6 and clues #7. 

Once I saw the reveal I started to play with the block layout and all the puzzle pieces we'd been given. This is a great opportunity to play with the different building blocks and see what you can come up with. I really like Bonnie's En Provence design and I have been toying with making it in a different scale with batiks. I'll leave that for another day.

I decided that I didn't want to use all those low volume four-patches in a border. This is completely personal preference. I love the look of a scrappy border, but I'm not a fan of how easy it is to introduce a really wavy border with all those blocks unless they are pieced and sewn perfectly and were are an identical size. The 54 seams down one side is more than enough to cause all manner of problems. I chose instead to use them in the blocks to create a quite striking star.

If I were to choose the colors for this quilt again, I would not have left so much contrast between the dark blue and the light blue. I would have picked a dark and a medium. My light blue just reads almost equal with the low volume prints. I pieced these while working on other things.

 Slowly I finished the blocks and put them up. They are quite striking without the sashing blocks.

Then I added the sashings and corner squares so I could see where I was headed.

The sashing units are coming together nicely. I still have plenty of work ahead of me but I think I've made great progress.

A note from Bonnie on her blog Quiltville: "Clues will be available until February 1st, 2017.  After this date, the pattern will be available as a digital download in the Quiltville Store."