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.

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.