Ziggity Zag quilt

For my birthday this year, a quilting friend gave me a June Tailor Perfect Half and Quarter Square Triangles Ruler.  I decided to try it out on a stack of black and white print nickel squares(5") that I had sitting around and Ziggity Zag was born.  This little gadget helps you make very accurate half square and quarter square triangles.  It's a slotted ruler that you use with your rotary cutter.  Here's a video that shows you how to use it. 



I started this quilt by creating the border and thinking that I would use some arrangement of half square triangles in the center but when I found this fat quarter in my stash, I decided to use it instead.  I thought it would make a nice wall hanging to go with the quilt shown on the right that I made a few years ago.  Many of the scraps from the first quilt are used in the wall hanging and I even had enough leftover binding from the first quilt to use on the smaller one!

This would be a good pattern to use if you have a fabric that you just don't want to cut up.  Just use it in the center! I used a fat quarter but you could really use any size fabric and adjust your border accordingly.

The zigzag effect is easy to achieve.  Here's a short tutorial-

For one block, you will need:

2 black 5" squares and 2 white 5" squares

Using one white square and one black square, make 2 half square triangles by your preferred method. Repeat for the other set of squares.  You will have 4 blocks that measure 4 1/2" each.  Arrange them as shown below and sew.

 

The quilting used on this quilt was a custom design by Linda of L&R Designs.  Here's a close-up-

In the center, the quilting goes out from the center of the flowers and imitates the lines of the flower.  A feather design was used in the border.

Next week, I'll show you what I am doing for the Mug Rug Swap I am participating in.

Nickel I Spy #2

Here's my Nickel I Spy #2 quilt.  Two down, about 10 to go.  I say about 10 to go because if it takes me long enough, some of our grandkids will be too old for an I Spy quilt.  This version is a little trickier to make if you don't have a large assortment of I Spy fabrics to choose from.  Each diagonal row is a certain color so you need to have the right amount of 5" charm squares for each row.  Another option would be to alternate light and dark rows of fabric instead of making each row a different color if you don't have enough different colors of I Spy fabrics.  I will probably have to do the same thing myself for one of my grandkids. 
Also, don't be afraid to mix in some other fabrics.  I used a couple of flannel I Spy fabric squares in this quilt.  Children like to feel the different textures of fabrics.

Even though I have been referring to diagonal rows, I did not construct this quilt in rows.  I used the same 9-patch construction that I have used in previous blog posts of my quilts.  There are nine 9-patch blocks in this quilt.  That's 81 nickels (5" squares).  It finishes at about 41"X41" which I think is a good size for a young child to drag around.


Nickel I Spy #2

I decided I wanted an allover quilting design for this quilt.  Linda of L&R Designs used a pantograph quilting pattern called  "Bubbles" and a variegated thread.  I love the way it turned out!  Here's a close-up-

For the back of the quilt, I used a fabric that I had purchased online to use in my I Spy quilts.  When I received the fabric, I realized that the motifs were too big for nickel squares.  That's one of the problems of ordering online. The next problem was that I had only ordered a yard and the quilt was 41"!  Sooo, I pieced the backing.  Here's what it looks like-

I was lucky enough to have two fabrics that I feel work well together.  So the backing has plenty of things for kids to spy with their little eye and I used up some of my fabric stash instead of buying more.  Well, at least I didn't buy any more for this quilt.