Design Wall and Mystery Link-up Monday

Here it is, the first clue finished in Bonnie K. Hunter's mystery quilt, Celtic Solstice!  So excited to be doing the mystery quilt for my third year!  If you haven't participated before, it's well worth the effort.  Bonnie is an excellent teacher and gives generously of her time and talent every year.  These are designs that will eventually be published in a book, but the instructions are free if you print them off during the next few months.  And it is a very fun way to make new online friends and improve your quilting skills at the same time.  I'm looking forward to surfing the link-up and seeing all the different color schemes people are doing.

I chose to go with Bonnie's recommended colors, because I like them and they are colors I have lots of in my stash.  In fact, if you look at the second from the right in the front row, that is a solid orange fabric that I played with rubber-stamping some designs from the Book of Kells, so it's perfect for this quilt!  This year we are using the Tri-Recs tool, which I happened to have already... years ago I was going to do a Storm at Sea, and then a Tennessee Waltz, neither of which materialized.  So this weekend with clue 1 is the most use my Tri-Recs has ever gotten!  Bonnie discourages pressing with steam, but I had to give up on the slower finger-pressing or I wouldn't have made it this far.  I also didn't snip off the sticky-outie triangles.  I started, but that fell by the wayside fairly quickly.  They'll all be sewn into the seams anyway.

Here are the two quilts I shared last week; they were made by my mother-in-law (not my own Grandma, but I call her Grandma on this blog).  I'm wondering if anyone knows the traditional names for these patterns?  Is the top one Crossed Canoes, or World Without End?  Is the bottom one a Kaleidoscope variation?

(edited: ok, Grandma says this is "Dresden Stars" from Quilt Magazine, Aug/Sept 2013)

(and this one is "Beautiful Star" from 101 Patchwork Patterns by Ruby McKim.  Thanks for checking for me - I really like both of them and may want to make one someday.)

My own design wall hasn't changed much for quite a while.  There is the beginning of another Bonnie Hunter quilt, String Star, and bits of the Fandom in Stitches "Not All Who Wander are Lost" quilt (except for the two most recent blocks which aren't shown on this older pic.)  I'll need to take some of these down once the mystery gets rolling, or maybe overlap.  Plus, I am being seriously tempted by the new quilt-along in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine, for the "Tone it Down" Burgoyne Surrounded quilt.  I can handle 4 quilts at once, and Christmas too, right? <<insert maniacal laughter here>>