Disappearing 4-Patch

I have been working on my latest quilt project for a friend of mine.  Her daughter is turning a year old and so I wanted to make her a quilt like I did her sister.  In fact, her sister was the first baby quilt that I had ever done, second quilt ever as well.  Below is that quilt:

 All of my quilts have been unique patterns and this one was no exception.  I was trying to find a way to use a fat quarter bundle with 5 coordinating fabrics and stuff I had on hand.  I have so much fabric, I should try to use some of it before buying more.  It took a long time to come up with a pattern that was interesting and not just straight blocks and which also used all the fabric without requiring loads more.  This sounds easy, but it really wasn't.

Pinterest is really a great visual place to get inspiration for quilts.  I can search block types and see what people have done for colors and fabric choices.  Some are really creative.  I settled on a block called "Disappearing 4-Patch".  It required 12 - 5" blocks of each of the 5 fabrics and 60 - 5" blocks of my solid, gray in this case.  The tutorial I used can be found here on how to make this block pattern.

Lots and lots of cutting.  Thankfully a fat quarter will give you 12 of these and have just a tiny bit left over.  Scrap pile!

Now all these squares need to be friends.  Sew them together.  Can I just say I love the chain piecing technique?  Quilting would be much more tedious if it wasn't for this!

After some cutting and swapping pieces around, you get a finished block that looks something like this:

Then you take a bunch of those and make a pattern and add a couple of borders.  I wanted to bring out the purple in this (one of my favorite colors and this is for a little girl so it's only appropriate) so I found hues that went with the patterns in the fat quarters.  As an aside - purples can be very tricky to match!

A close up view of the work in progress.  I was impressed with myself on how well all my points matched on this quilt.  Being an anal engineer definitely has its perks.

Then we toss in some batting, put a back on it, stitch it together and throw some binding on and ba-da bing, ba-da boom, voila!

I am hoping the little munchkin likes it.  :)  The next one in the hopper is for my daughter, so there's more to come off the sewing presses.  Not sure who else I am going to make these for now that everyone is done having babies.  Ha!  

Rainbow Whirls

In my free time (ha!), what little there is, I enjoy sitting at the sewing machine and creating quilts.  Mostly I am doing baby quilts due to the rash of friends having little ones, but I someday envision a time where I actually make a bigger one for people to use when they are curled up on the sofa or one for our bed.  In the meantime I get a lot of practice on technique and picking fabrics.  My latest finished quilt took a lot time to get together.  Not because it was hard, but just because it was one that didn't have priority to be done for a baby shower. :)

Of course I have an inspiration board on Pinterest for quilts and one of those pins spurred the thought behind this quilt.  When I set out to do this, the person having the baby didn't know if was a boy or a girl.  I was looking for something to do in rainbows.

Thankfully, the Missouri Star Quilt Company put together this fabulous tutorial on making pinwheels.  I have such a hard time with triangles, so this video gave me the boost of confidence in finding a "cheat" to making pinwheels so I just went for it.  I think it is the best way to make them, especially if your whole quilt is pinwheels.  You can basically make whatever size you want and just roll.  As a side note, the lady that does these tutorials is great.  I have watched a good number of them and they are excellent.

I am pretty pleased with how this one turned out.  It's colorful and pops.  Not to mention it was fun to make.  I had a small learning curve to learn that it mattered how I assembled the pinwheels together.  My seam ripper and I bonded just like always.  I swear, one of these days I'll get through a project where I won't need it.

It was shown off to the whole family and everyone ooohed and aaahed over it.  I just hope the little man who ended up with it loves it just as much. :)

Colin's Quilt

I finally made the time to finish my son's first quilt not all that long ago.  It took a while with everything else I was doing, but he now has a place to play and drool on.  :) 

 I was having a hard time picking THE quilt pattern for him.  I really wanted a sailboat pattern, but the ones I found I wasn't happy with and so I ultimately settled on a pattern I had used for my friend's little girl.  I opted for frogs instead of butterflies this time, but it was still fun trying to pick out all of the fabric I was going to need.  You really need to have a clear vision of what you want your finished product to look like to pick good fabrics.  So far I'd like to think I have had pretty good luck.  :)

Over a couple of weeks I did all of the cutting and initial block making.  This quilt takes a few steps just to get to the image show below.  For each of those green-blue-white blocks, I had to sew two larger blocks into two smaller squares for each color combination (green-blue and blue-white) and divide them each time.  Then for the final assembly, sew the two different combinations together and split them once more to get the final block.  It's a lot of small steps, but if you find your groove it doesn't take too long.  

The easier pieces of the block are just the straight white blocks and even the motif centered blocks.  The motif centered (frogs) are a little tricky just to make sure you have enough fabric and can get the character centered how you want them.  This one was slightly easier than the butterflies, but still a bit tricky.

Once you get all 9 blocks together you get the one bigger block which becomes the true block you work into your pattern.  I alternated the pieced blocks with what are referred to as "snowball" blocks.  I guess someone thought that's what they looked like at one point.  In any case, once you get the lined up and sewn together, you start to see a fun larger pattern emerge.

The final top layer step is to add borders.  They really make the quilt come together and give it definition.  Once you get that part together, you can start to assemble the quilt with your top layer (quilted), the filling (typically cotton batting), and then your backing (typically a solid fabric).  This was the first quilt I decided to machine together, so it was a bit intense putting it through my machine.  But the good news is, I now know I can do it, and it gives it a somewhat professional look to it.

Quilting truly is a labor of love.  I am sure my little man is going to make all kinds of messes on this quilt, but I also know that it will be a keepsake no matter what shape it gets to be.  :)  

Baby Quilts

Where on earth do I find the time to do these things?  When I figure it out, I will let you know.  But mostly I suspect it's my lack of ability to sit still and do nothing.  Most of the time it seems like such a waste.  I have a lot of things I want to do in my free time, but I just prioritize the hell out of it.  It helps to have a loving husband who is supportive of my insane need to do some of these things.  :)

Anywho, it's been a while since I made a quilt, but all these people are having babies and so my baby quilt book is starting to see some exercise!  The first batter up is Sarah who is having a shower this weekend.  I asked her a while ago what, if any, kind of theme she was going with.  Jungle prints, courtesy of inherited baby stuff from family members.  Awesome, I can work with that.  I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and let my mind wander as I picked out a pattern and fabric to go with it.  The patterns in the book always explain how to re-create the exact quilt shown, so I have to think outside the mold a little if I like the basic pattern, but not their prints (pretty much how all of them are). 

I pieced it together Friday during the day while everyone was out of the house.  After Colin went to sleep, I stayed up hand tying it together.  My husband thought it would be a good idea to record this process.

Looks just like I know what I am doing!  :)  This morning I finished making the binding and attached it to the quilt.  I find myself always going to look for the YouTube Video I found a few years ago to help me figure out how to get it to meet up and lay flat.   It never makes sense when I watch it, but it works every time!  Finished product:

And while I was at it, I decided to make some pacifier clips in case they need them.  I found them to be a life saver from having to play, "pick the pacifier up off the floor and rinse" every 5 minutes.   I found the pattern on Pinterest and it worked out pretty well. 

I am sure there will be a few more posted here before the year is out.  It seems people have really caught onto the baby fever!