Nickel I Spy #3

This I Spy quilt is for Lily. Lily turns 4 this week. We have 6 grandchildren turning 4 in a year's time.  From September 19, 2006 through September 18, 2007, my husband's 4 daughters, my daughter and my son's wife all had children!  I think that's probably some kind of record.

Lily has a baby sister, Lucille or Lulu as Lily calls her so I thought it would be nice for them to have matching I Spy quilts.  By matching, I mean all of the I Spy squares are the same in each quilt but are arranged differently so they can play a matching game when Lulu gets old enough.

As you can see, I added their names in the center of the quilt.  I fused the letters of their names on and did a small zigzag stitch around each letter.  I used a different color scheme for each quilt.  The same fabric was used for the name, the backing and binding on each quilt-pink for Lily and lavender for Lucy Violet.

Linda of L&R Designs did a cute flower and loops quilting design that really added to the "girlyness" of the quilts.  Here's a close-up of the design on Lily's quilt.   A pastel variegated thread was used on Lily's quilt and a lavender thread was used on Lucy's.  Two quilts done, many more to go!

Easter Eggs quilt

Just in time for Easter with a week to spare!  I say this with surprise because I too often finish projects late or give up on them when I know I can't complete them by the time I want to use them or give them as gifts. 

This Easter Eggs quilt just popped into my head last week. As I sat staring, with a basket of odd pieces of trim sitting in my line of vision, I came up with the idea to "decorate" some nickel squares.  This turned into decorating "egg" blocks and my Easter Eggs quilt was born.  Funny how the design process works sometimes!  Now I have a table topper to decorate my table for Easter or maybe I'll put it on the wall and use it as a wall hanging.

To decorate the "eggs", I used scraps of ribbon and rickrack of various sizes and even some scraps of chenille strips.  I left a few eggs without any embellishment when I felt the pattern of the fabric was enough.  A fat quarter was used in the center and was the color inspiration for the fabrics and trims.  This project would be a good use for all those decorative stitches on my machine that I never use.  Maybe sometime I'll decorate some eggs that way.  Here are some close-ups of a few of the eggs-

As I was looking at this quilt on my table, I decided that Easter Egg coasters would be cute so I made this one.

            Easter Eggs quilt as a table topper                                  Easter Eggs coaster



Nickel Snowballs quilt

The Nickel Snowballs quilt is a great way to use a lot of your fabric scraps.  I used 70 blue nickel squares and 245 white nickel squares, all from my stash. I love the look of the scrappy white on white fabrics.  Of course, any color could be used.  I just seem to have lots of blue fabric and I barely put a dent in it even though  the quilt ended up so big that I had to lay it on a bed to photograph it.  It has not been quilted yet but I'll post it again when it has.  It's laying on a queen bed but is actually a twin size.  Doesn't look too bad in my blue and white bedroom. I can't make too many more this size or I'll never catch up up on my challenge!

 

Nickel Snowballs quilt



Nickel Snowballs is another quilt from the Nickel Nine Patch series of quilts that all begin with a nine patch block of nickel squares.  Just start with a 5" square of fabric and add smaller squares to all four corners.  Sew diagonally across the corners as shown and then press the squares to the corners to form triangles and you have a snowball block.

                            

After making the snowball block, I incorporated it into a nine patch block. This nine patch block makes it easy to achieve the look of sashing and borders without the hassle of long strips.  I used 5" X 14" strips to replace 3-5" squares in this example.  I had enough fabric to do this which really cut down on my cutting and sewing time.

                          

My next quilt project is much smaller and just in time for Easter.  It can be used as a wall hanging or table topper.   I'm using up a bunch of small odd pieces of trim that I don't know why I even kept.  Here's a peek-



Flower Power

Flower Power is the flower version of my Twisted Nickel quilt.  Both quilts are made using the exact same block!  Color placement makes all the difference.  They are part of my Nickel Nine Patch series of quilts.  That's the name I'm giving all my quilts that start out as a nine patch made up of 5" squares.

Here's how to make this block also called Washington's Puzzle.  The scraps you see off to the side of the ruler will someday be a second quilt. What a deal, two quilts from one set of blocks.

                       

                        

Here's the quilt I am working on to use the scraps from the Twisted Nickel quilt.  Just an idea right now.

I'm Back

It's been awhile but I hope to get back on a more regular schedule with my posts.  While I was gone, I was featured as a guest blogger on The Quilting Gallery.  Check it out if you want to find out more about this challenge.

I've been back from the AQS quilt show in Lancaster Pennsylvania for a week already and am happy to say my husband survived his first quilt show!  I don't know where the time goes. It's not that I haven't been busy, my Twisted Nickel quilt is now quilted and bound.  This picture doesn't do justice to the fantastic quilting done by my long arm quilter, Linda of L&R Designs, so I've included two close-ups of the quilting design.

I have been working on another version of this quilt and on what to do with the leftover scraps from this project.  I hope to show you what I come up with next week.

I also sewed binding on a quilt on our drive to Pennsylvania.  It was one of my UFO's.  I think I started it maybe 3 years ago.  I know it's been quilted since before Christmas of 2009!  But, it's done now and hanging on the wall hiding an ugly electrical box and cable outlets.  If it looks a little crooked, it might be because it's stapled to the wall!  I don't want to take time to make a sleeve and it probably won't be a wall quilt after we move anyway. The squares are stacked and sewn so the raw edges can fray.  It's a very easy quilt and uses alot of fabric. 

And, last but not least, I have been writing patterns for the quilts of this challenge and working on a web site for them.  The site is up at http://www.doublenickelquilts.com/ and will eventually have all of the patterns for sale as downloads.

And, oh yeah, did I mention I work full-time?