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?

Twisted Nickel quilt

The block in this quilt is a variation of a traditional block called Washington's Puzzle. There are a few different ways to make this block.  You can cut nine individual pieces for each block and sew them together or you can paper piece the block. I chose to make nine patch blocks and then made angled cuts to form a new square.  A consequence of this construction method is leftover pieces from trimming the blocks and bias edges on the outside edges of the block.  Don't see a way to get around having bias edges somewhere.  I hope to design a way to use the leftover pieces in another quilt.  Do you see the secondary pattern of flowers that developed by rotating the blocks?  There's an idea floating around in my head about making the flowers more predominate in another quilt. 

This quilt has not been quilted yet.  Life beyond quilting has been very busy.  My husband bowled in the State bowling tournament this weekend and our house is finally on the market with my sewing area being neat and tidy but almost unusable.  I have to get so much stuff out and put it back every time I sew.  What a pain!

On another note, we were fortunate to have my husband's oldest daughter and her two youngest children stay with us for a few days.  They are moving from Illinois to Denver Colorado and were heading into bad weather so stopped and stayed with us until today.  It was good to see them since they will live much farther away now. 

There won't be a post next week because my husband and I are off to the AQS quilt show in Lancaster Pennsylvania.  We are very excited for the trip because two of his daughters live about an hour from Lancaster so we plan to spend time with them and six of our grandchildren.  I'm ready for a break from this challenge and hope to come back refreshed and ready to sew.  I have a lot of catching up to do to keep on track to make 55 quilts in a year.

Fluttering Around

Finally done!!  Here's the butterfly quilt that I gave you a sneak peek of last time.

As you can see, this quilt has way more pieces than any of the quilts I have previously posted.  I used 5 inch squares and some smaller scraps to make the 99 butterfly blocks and 44 blocks in the border. It's a great way to use a bunch of scraps.  The time it took to complete it put me even more off track of my goal of 55 quilts in in my 55th year.  I am 8 quilts behind already!  I call this quilt Fluttering Around for two reasons-the block looks like butterflies to me and it describes me right now.  Since I have started this challenge, it seems like I have been busier than ever.  One major thing that has been happening lately is that we are getting our house ready to sell.  We put in new carpet this week and that meant moving 4 bedrooms and 1 living room of furniture and then putting it all back.  Very exhausting.  A new master bath floor goes in tomorrow morning and then maybe we will have some semblance of normal for awhile.  However, having our house on the market means I can't take over half of it with my quilting.  I have to get really organized and put everything away so that the house shows well.  That is going to be very hard.

Though I think this block looks like butterflies, it is my interpretation of the Beggar's Block.  The Beggar's Block is a nine patch block the has a solid square in the center.  My block has a butterfly in the center.
It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how I really wanted to construct this quilt. The good news is that I came up with a much easier way to make it as I was going through the design process.  I first starting making the blocks using paper piecing and then decided to eliminate that whole process.  I made the borders as long strips (which I hate to do) but figured out how to not do that in the future.  I also came up with a super simple way to miter the corners.  I call it a fake miter.  If somebody else has figured this out, I certainly haven't seen it.  Here's a quick tutorial-



The border is made up of these blocks.  I needed 2 blocks for each corner-1 for the top border and 1 for the side border, for example. 

 

I placed the 2 blocks right side together, drew a line from corner to corner and sewed on the line.
I then cut 1/4" from the sewn line to get my seam.  I pressed it open and voila, a mitered corner.

The quilting on this quilt is a custom design by Linda of L&R Designs.  I think it's the perfect design to emphasize the butterfly block.  The variegated thread is a perfect choice too.