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.

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.

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.

Nickel Double Four Patch quilt

My Nickel Double Four Patch quilt uses more of the four patch blocks that I made back on Memorial Day weekend.  Another quilt made entirely from my stash!

This time I combined the four patch blocks with squares of green fabric and cream fabric and then alternated the blocks throughout the quilt.  I seem to have alot of green fabric so I decided to see what would happen if I kept all the dark squares the same.  I'm happy with the outcome and very happy to be using some green fabric.  Here's what the blocks look like.

 I pieced four different green fabrics together to make the backing creating another four patch and using more green fabric.  The scrappy binding was made from scraps of fabric left over from the backing.

Linda came up with a fun quilting design for this quilt. She used a cream thread throughout which works perfectly.

Mack's quilt

Five years ago today, my second grandson was born.  Macklane (Mack for short) is my daughter's first child.  Little did we know when Mack was born that my husband's four daughters and my son's wife would all have babies in the next year!  Bridger is the last one born in that year time frame.  He turned four yesterday.

I made this I-Spy quilt for Mack's birthday.  He hasn't seen it yet because his birthday party isn't until the weekend.  I hope he likes it!  The backing has construction vehicles on it and he loves that sort of thing.

I plan to make Mack's three little sisters I Spy quilts using the exact same fabrics that were used in his quilt.  I'll arrange the I Spy fabrics differently for each quilt so they can use them to play a matching game and since their names will be on them, there shouldn't be any fighting over whose is whose. One of his sisters has a birthday in November and the other in December, the day after my birthday so I guess they need to be part of this Double Nickel Challenge!

Linda of L&R Designs used a variegated thread and custom quilting design to quilt this quilt for me.  I used the same fabric for the binding and the letters of Mack's name.  I really wished I would have noticed that red square above the K in his name.  I would have moved it if I would have noticed before it was quilted!