Lupine and Laughter: A Mystery Solved

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

Now that we are well into January, the Lupine and Laughter mystery quilt along has come to an end, revealing the full design of the quilt!

The quilt pattern is really quite lovely in Bonnie Hunter's original colours, and quilt top assembly is made easy with very few matching corners! I'm looking forward to putting my own version of this quilt together!

Of course, I'm still working on my Old Town quilt, so I'm not quite ready to get started on Lupine and Laughter. But I can still take a look at the pattern to see how accurate my earlier guesses were, and to mock up the finished pattern in my own colours!

The Lupine and Laughter quilt is a design by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

Mystery Solved

Let's start off by taking a look at Bonnie Hunter's version of the quilt!

I really like the contrast between the open and airy Lupine Star block and the denser colour blocking in the Ohio Star blocks!

Of course, the actual quilt looks much better than this digital mock up, and is a different size too, so I recommend checking out Bonnie Hunter's Lupine and Laughter Pattern Reveal post to see the real sample quilt!

Checking the Clues

Now that we know what the quilt pattern looks like, lets take a look back at the assumptions I made about the pattern a few weeks ago!

My first guess was that the pattern would be set en pointe.

The logic behind this one was pulled from past trends, not evidence in the Lupine and Laughter pattern itself. And as it turns out, Bonnie Hunter chose not to carry on this trend by releasing two straight set patterns in a row!

I don't know if there was a reason for this change, but I'm honestly happy to have been proven wrong on this front. It's a good reminder to base my thoughts on the pattern that's in front of me!

And being straight set also clears up a lot of my confusion regarding the arrangement of the blocks and units!

When I released my Mystery Musings post, I sorted units into block A, block B, and border pieces.

I was correct in the way I sorted them, but began second guessing whether the motif would use alternating blocks, or blocks and pieced sashing, because I was struggling to understand how the number of units being made would fit into an en pointe layout.

At the end of the quilt along, I'm happy to say that most of my week by week logic was fairly sound!

Planning My Quilt

Now that the mystery has been solved, I'm looking forward to seeing it in my own colours!

My first thought is that this feels really busy.

A busy quilt can be a lot of fun sometimes, but I'm aiming for a soft and dreamy sunset feeling, so I'll be making a few changes to my colour placement, and to the units used in my version of the Lupine and Laughter pattern!

My first change will be removing the border.

Pieced borders are a great way to add extra detail to a quilt, but in my colours, I feel like the large scale of the border triangles makes the blocks feel small and cramped. I've also recently been appreciating the simplicity of a coordinating solid border!

With that small change, it feels much less busy!

My next goal is to change the colour placement so the various orange, yellow, black, and white accent fabrics emphasize the star shapes in the piecing!

The Ohio Star blocks have the colours placed nicely already, but the Lupine Star blocks have the accent colours in the background of the block rather than emphasizing the shape of the star itself.

To fix this, I've swapped the colours of the large corner triangles with the half rectangle triangle points of the Lupine Star!

Though this emphasizes the star design much better, I've now got a huge square of my pinkish mauve fabric between each block, which I would like to break up a little.

An easy way to change that is by rotating the half square triangle units in the outer corners of the Ohio Star blocks!

Much better!

I'm pretty happy with how the mock up looks at this point, but it still feels just a little too busy for the dreamy feeling I'm hoping to evoke, so I'm going to try one more small change and see how that effects it!

To soften the colours a little bit, I've taken the accent colours out of the central half square triangles in the Lupine Star blocks and replaced them with more of the pinkish mauve fabric.

I think this helps a lot and brings the design much closer to the feeling I had originally hoped to achieve!

Before I can start stitching these changes into fabric, I still need to finish piecing my Old Town quilt top, but that just means I have some time to check the quilt math before jumping into the project!

Friends, thank you so much for following along with my Lupine and Laughter quilt progress so far! I've had so much fun picking my colours, puzzling my way through the mystery instructions, and planning changes to the design!

I can't wait to see whether my idea is able to translate into fabric!

If you've enjoyed my progress so far and are considering making a Lupine and Laughter quilt of your own, be sure to check out the quilt along page of the Quiltville website before the end of January to take advantage of the free download!

Of, if you miss the free download period, the Lupine and Laughter pattern will be available for purchase from the Quiltville pattern store!

If you make this pattern, I would love to see your finished quilt! Please share stories and photos in the comments, by email, or tag me on Instagram!

Until Next Time Friends, Happy Quilting!

~VA