Grand Illusion--1

Bonnie Hunter's newest mystery quilt is based on the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island is an island (duh!) above Michigan's lower peninsular. They don't allow motorized vehicles on the island.--Not exactly true. They do have some fire engines, and in the winter, snowmobiles are the way to go.You have to take a ferry to get to the island. The town is filled with tons of touristy things--shopping, fudge shops, restaurants, many hotels. The shops hire a lot of college-age kids to work there, so there are also residences for the kids.

Some people live on the island year-round, but most are summer people. There is a small school for the year-rounders. Everything used on the island has to come over by boat as well. Construction on the island is quite expensive because every piece of timber comes across, every load of topsoil.

Many ferries to the island leave from Mackinaw City. Notice the spelling difference. Mackinac Island, Mackinaw City. Just in case you didn't notice. The two names are pronounced the same. This is one way you can tell if someone's not from Michigan.

The Grand Hotel is the grand lady of the island. The Michigan Governor has a summer house on the island too. On the road around the island are these huge, old. wonderful mansions that they call "cottages."

Grand Illusion is in honor of the Grand Hotel this year. Bonnie taught some classes there this spring and fell in love with the colors presented there. The decor is very colorful, as you would see in Bonnie's choices.

The turquoise of the ceilings, the green of the chairs, the yellow of the curtains, pink of the geraniums and some couches, and black from the floors. Bonnie is the queen of scrappy quilts, but I chose to use yardage on this one. Made my Celtic Solstice (renamed My Happy Quilt) scrappy, wanted to try planned.

Here's Clue One:

 I just had a big scare. My subsequent pictures all have the wrong block as the center. I mixed up the baggies with Clue #1 and Clue #4, and thought I had made a huge mistake. Whew! I don't have to rip and rip and redo. I did manage to get it right the first time.

Here's Clue number 2:

Clue #2 was a little tricky to piece.

Here's Clue #3:

Pretty straightforward piecing on this one. I bet this will be a border.

Clue #4:

 OK, now you can see how similar it is to Clue #1.

We will know at the end of the mystery how to put these all together. I played around a little and came up with this:

I'm sure Bonnie will come up with a better idea than this!

Thanks,
Lin