If you have been reading this blog for the past ten months, you know that I was doing the mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter. The title is Rhododendron Trail. I ended up following My Own Rhododendron Trail, but the top is done. I love how it looks.

Remember that now the pattern is for sale on Bonnie Hunter’s website. It is a copywrited pattern, and I am going to be diligent not to give away the part counts and/or measurements. Please buy her pattern if you want to make this quilt.

Bonnie does these yearly starting in late Nov. and running approximately 6 – 8 weeks. If you are interested in doing it as a mystery quilt, go to her site and sign up for it. Each week a new “installment” comes out. If you want to do along that gives you a week for each part.

The mystery begins:

On Black Friday 2021, the introduction for the mystery came out. Choose the fabrics. This year the suggested colors were pinks, garnet, yellow, neutral, and teal/aqua. I love the color suggestions.

Since the point of these mystery quilts is to use scraps, I dug through my scrap bins and found everything but the garnet. However, I had a burgundy solid in my stash that I used for the garnet color. So far so good. I have more than enough fabric available. No purchases necessary. Yippee!

Mystery Quilt – Part 1 & 3:

The directions are for HST (half square triangles) of pink and neutral. The below photo has the pink and neutral HST as a section of part 3.

For part 3, “wings” are added to the HST.

Mystery Quilt – Part 2:

This installment was to make flying geese. The “goose” is pink. The sky is yellow on one side and the other side neutral.

Mystery Quilt – Part 4:

Make lots of hourglass blocks from garnet and neutrals. I thought I was never going to get these done. And I lost count and ended up with extra…

Mystery Quilt – Part 5:

These blocks consisted of the Part 1 & 3 pieces and a pink triangle.

At this point, I still had no idea how the quilt would look when finished. Truthfully, I really try not to do a lot of thought about what it will look like finished. My goal is just to enjoy the process and complete each step.

Mystery Quilt – Part 6:

This installment completed one of the two blocks used in the center of the quilt.

The steps were easy, and this part went quickly.

Mystery Quilt – Part 7:

If you were keeping up with me via my posts at this point, you know I said no to doing this block. It involves a lot of neutral strips and the neutral and garnet hourglass blocks.

I pieced one block and said there is no way I am going to do (x amount) of those. Time to head off in my own direction. Or I like to think of it as being an independent quilter.

I decided to utilize the teal/aqua as sashing around the blocks from part 6. The hourglass blocks would be used as posts with the sashing.

Mystery Quilt – Part 8:

The directions were for making setting pieces and putting the top together with narrow teal/aqua (blue) strips and alternating blocks from parts 6 & 7.

I continued with my idea. The blocks from part 6 with sashing and posts. Then a 2.25″ blue border to completely frame the blocks. After that a beautiful multi-colored flower print on a black background. It set off the colors in the blocks to perfection. Then another 2.25″ blue border.

Mystery Quilt – Part 9 (The big reveal!):

Here is the mystery quilt as it is intended to be made. It is beautiful.

I did not have the patience or interest in making the second set of blocks.

My Own Rhododendron Trail:

Using basically the same parts, but very different results. It is beautiful too. This is a great example of taking a pattern and making it your own.

I used the flying geese parts as one of the borders. The directions called for a certain amount, and that is what I made. Sure, I could have made enough to fill in for the blank white places in the border, but why?

The top is finished. There is enough of the floral border print to do the binding.

I have a small print black backing fabric that will go great with this quilt. Hopefully I can get it in for machine quilting in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I need to think about how I would like the quilting done.

Finished size is 88″ x 100″.

Moral to the story of My Own Rhododendron Trail:

Please enjoy your quilt making journey. Change it up. It is perfectly ok to use parts of the quilt directions. Do what you want and leave out what you want. Utilize basic geometry to change the sizes of various pieces. Make each quilt your own.

Happy Quilting.

PLEASE NOTE: 
ALL PHOTOS AND WRITTEN CONTENT ARE MY OWN UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

FB 08-23-22 / P 09-05-22 /I 08-23-22