Flimsy Alert! ~ "Starry Eyed Over Bonnie's Grand Illusion"

Woohoo!  I finished my quilt top Tuesday night, but a snowstorm kept me from getting photos until now. 

I was so excited to participate in Bonnie Hunter's mystery this winter after watching 5 others roll by without me! With so much on my backlist, I did limit myself strictly to stash-only, and it happened that I had all the colors in her scheme.

So I happily followed along, knowing that I would do most of the work AFTER the holidays instead of with the clue-reveal pace. And now I have my top finished!

You can see that I changed things up. I did all the patches according to Bonnie's plan, but the values of the greens I went with for the checkerboards weren't so great with her assembly.

Bonnie's Grand Illusion quilt, and many peoples' who have finished her design as it is, just shimmers - I totally see the "Illusion" part of the name. It's like a mirage. And I really like that.

But my yellow was not perky enough to stand against the strong emerald/Christmas greens I used. Instead of shimmering, when I laid a large section of Bonnie's design out on the floor, it laughed maniacally at me - like Heath Ledger doing the Joker! Seriously. So I set aside the green checker blocks, which will look AWESOME in either a March green-and-white quilt or put together with white and red for a Christmas quilt. That's for some other time, though.

So I dusted off my EQ program and worked up a design to use all my other Grand Illusion pieces. I decided I wanted to pull green back in somehow since it's an integral part of the first Bonnie mystery I've done. I went through my stash again and found better greens. But I didn't have the heart to work that whole Clue 3 again, nor do I have a good variety of that kind of green to make the scrappy look up that the rest of my quilt has. That's OK. I rather like the idea that popped into my head to morph this into a derivation of the mystery.

This is 93" x 93" and used all my non-Clue3 patches. The star construction is rearranged as well as the overall design, because I sewed the first couple together WRONG, and then decided to just keep them that way. 

I chose my quilt's name to reflect the fun of watching literally thousands of people around the world eagerly anticipate each clue, passing time excitedly chatting with each other, wondering what and when and how. . . sharing ideas on different ways to attack each clue. It was great fun, and we were all starry-eyed together for several weeks. And I'm thrilled with how a bunch of scraps and left-over yardage and orphaned fabrics in my stash all came together so wonderfully in this quilt top!

Thank you, Bonnie!!

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Linking up at:

Bonnie's Grand Illusion Link-Up

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

TGIFF is at From Bolt to Beauty this week
 (main site here)