Sunday, October 30, 2011

Flower Hexies

Recently my friend Linda and I participated in a 2 day Bus Hop.  We traveled to 8 quilt shops that had been featured in Better Homes and Gardens Quilt Sampler magazine.  All of the shops were in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin.  We boarded the bus at The Woolen Needle in Williamsburg, Iowa which is about 30 miles west of home.  They were featured in the Fall 2010 magazine.

We knew we would be on the bus for 2 hours at a time, several times and decided that this would be a great time to do some English paper piecing.  I took along my 2" hexagons to work on and Linda worked on some 1" hexagons.  We accomplished alot though it is not easy to thread a needle while the bus is moving!

A nickel (5") square works well for a 2" hexagon.  Each side of the hexagon is 2" long.  The picture below shows how the paper piece fits on a nickel square.  The second picture is of one of my hexagon flowers.  The flowers measure around 10 " across.  I hope to make a lap size quilt from them.

Monday, October 17, 2011

My Picnic Quilt


My Picnic Quilt is a nickel nine patch quilt, a quilt made up of nine patch blocks that are made from nickel (5") squares of fabric.  A nickel nine patch block finishes at 13 1/2" which means you don't need to make many of these blocks to make a large quilt very quickly. The Picnic Quilt has only 20 blocks in the center.  The two borders add another 13 1/2" to it's size making it big enough to have a picnic on, thus the name.  I used a three color block but any nine patch block color scheme would work. I used bright scraps from my stash to try to make a cheery quilt though I could see this pattern made from plaids or florals too.   

The back is pieced from more bright fabric from my stash.  Woohoo, another quilt entirely from my stash! I believe quilts should be used and I can't wait to throw it on the ground and have a picnic!


            
Linda used bright green thread and a Nouveau Feather Meander quilting design to finish this quilt for me.





Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Scrappy Again! quilt contest

The Quilting Gallery has a weekly quilt contest where you can submit a quilt you have made and win a prize.  The theme for this week's contest is Scrappy Again! Quilts.  Guidelines4Quilting.com is the sponsor this week and is giving away two gift certificates, $20 to the first place winner and $10 for second place.  They are also offering a $5.00 bonus to everyone!

I entered my Twirligig quilt and you have until Thursday evening to enter a quilt also.  Voting begins on Friday.  Be sure to check out the site and vote for your favorite quilt.  If you have never visited the Quilting Gallery, you should.  There is a directory of quilting bloggers, a quilt shop locator, guest bloggers, free quilting projects and lots more.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Just Add Scraps #1 and #2

Just Add Scraps #1
Just Add Scraps #2

Can you believe these two quilts were made from the same quilt pattern? Can you believe the pattern uses a disappearing nine patch (D9P) block?  It's all about color placement.  Read on to see how I did it. 

Both quilts started with a basic nine patch quilt block,


were cut down the center both ways creating four new blocks,


the four pieces were rotated to create the look of sashing and corner stones,



and each of the 4 pieces was then combined with 3 pieces from 3 different blocks to create a new 4 patch block.



To finish the look of the sashing and corner stones, additional pieces were added to one short side and one long side as shown below at the right side of the  block.



You have two very different looks from a simple nine patch block based on color placement.  Just Add Scraps #1 has nine different fabrics in each block.  Just Add Scraps #2 has a green fabric in the center and the same cream fabric for every other square as shown above.

All of the nine patch blocks were made using 5" squares.  The additional sashing pieces are 2 1/2" X 5" and the corner stones are 2 1/2" squares.  I love this pattern as a great way to use lots of scraps really fast.  The small quilt starts out with only 12 nine patch blocks!  The larger one has 20 nine patch blocks.
I pieced the back of the Just Add Scraps #2 quilt from an assortment of green scraps that were in my stash. ( It actually looks better than this picture.)  The bright orange quilt backing used on Just Add Scraps #1 is from my stash also.  The width of the fabric worked for this small quilt so I didn't need to piece it.  Two more quilts using only fabric from my stash!  Forty one down, fourteen to go with only nine weeks left!

















The two quilts are quilted very differently also.  Linda of L&R Designs came up with some very creative custom designs for them.

The first pattern she calls Square Loops Meander

 and the second one is Sine Waves

 
Click on the links for more detailed info. on the quilting designs.