This quilt, from Bonnie Hunter’s blog, is called Scrappy Trips Around the World. You can link to the pattern here. It was given to my step daughter as present to mark her graduation from a university honours program.

It’s a super easy pattern and very fun to make. Many of my colourful and bright 2.5″ strips  got used up in making this (though I’m not sure how much of a dent I made in the pile!). I made it with scraps I’d cut from fat quarters and width of fabric cuts of yardage as I’m not one to buy jelly rolls or other coordinated fabric lines.

While the pattern calls for all blocks to be scrappy, I needed somewhere for the eyes to rest, given  how vibrant the colours are. Therefore I made the centre diagonal row in each block with a solid black fabric. I like how it gives some cohesion to a very scrappy quilt and how the colours all seem to work together with the black row anchoring each block.

This quilt involved some new math on my part. It was made with twelve inch blocks, six wide and eight down. For some inexplicable reason I had decided that would make the quilt 72″ x 84″. I only realized after the fact that my math skills had failed me and 8 x 12 is actually 96″ and not 84″. No wonder it took so long to quilt! I did the simple cross hatch quilting on my home sewing machine. My arms, shoulders and upper back definitely got a work out!

I’d make this again – however, I’d check my math before assembling the quilt.

I’m linking this up with Oh Scrap as well as Wednesday Wait Loss 

and here

Made with Happy blocks as per Mary Quilts this quilt was super easy and quick to do.  It used 16 4.5 inch squares for the centre blocks.  The only hard thing about it was deciding what border to put on.

The pink won and the final quilt looked like this:

I had just enough of a yellow/blue/pink fabric to back this with! Final quilt turned out around 40″ square.

It has already been donated to the quild for their Community Outreach program.

I’m in the process of making the Gathered Star Quilt. I’m really happy how it is turning out.

This quilt is based on a block by Judith Martin called Star Cluster Quilt Block

Mine looks like that block, however the block size and construction are different.

The star block is 32″, and I constructed this using half square triangles and squares.

The small blocks are 4″ finished or 4.5″ unfinished, and the four large coloured blocks are 8″ finished or 8.5″ unfinished.

Cut as follows”

• 6 yellow and white half square triangles, 4.5″
• 6 red and white half square triangles, 4.5″
• 6 blue and white half square triangles, 4.5″
• 6 green and white half square triangles, 4.5″

• 1 green and blue half sqauare triangle, 4.5″
• 1 green and red half square triangle, 4.5″
• 1 red and yellow half square triangle, 4.5″
• 1 yellow and blue half square triangle 4.5″
• 20 4.5″ square white blocks.

For the borders

• 2, 32.5″ white strips
• 2, 36.5″ white strips
• 6 strips of 2.5″ x 6.5″ of each colour in the quilt (red, blue, green and yellow)
• 1 of each colour (red, blue, green and yellow), 2.5″ inch square

They were laid out as follows:

And I then sewed them together one quadrant at a time.

The quilt right now is 32″ square.

Borders:

Sew  the 32.5″ white strips on to the opposite sides of the quilt, press, then sew on the 36.5″ strips on the remaining two sides.

For the outer border lay out the 2″5 x 6.5″ strips,and 2.5″ squares as follows:

The finished quilt top should be 40″ square and look like this:

The Twisted Star quilt has been a work in progress for some time but finally it has been finished and gifted. Here is it bound and ready to gift.

A couple we  know from Marc’s history club were having their first baby and of course we needed to present them with a quilt for the baby. I didn’t want to ask the sex so I wanted something fairly gender neutral in the quilt I made.

To record how I made this quilt I saw this quilt on Pinterest called Hidden Star  by Annie McHugs and it got my creative juices going.

I, of course, made some changes, changing the finished size to 36″ from her 52″ inch quilt, and using four constant colours instead of scrappy tones. Laying out the blocks was a bit of a challenge but other than that it went together very nicely and easily.

I found this a little bit unfinished looking so designed a border using the materials in the star.

I think the border just finished it off nicely.

Linking up with Midweek Makers

I have been on quite the quilting binge these last two weeks or so. Amazing what happens when one suddenly has more time on her hands!

Just want to track what I’ve started in the last two weeks:

1.  Baby sized Swoon quilt for a friend’s upcoming new arrival! – currently being bound
2. Yellow and Green Happy blocks with frogs quilt 40″ square – bound and completed
3. Pink, Blue and Purple happy blocks quilt top – child sized quilt top
4. Stripy Sports themed quilt top  – kid sized
5. Googly monsters Warm Wishes quilt top – kid sized

1. Doggy themed fabric Warm Wishes quilt top  – kid sized
2. 2 placemats started, quilted, bound and finished
3. Black and white 9 patch quilt  from picture I saw on Facebook) quilt top layered and ready for quilting – baby sized 36″ square ,
4. Four winds baby sized quilt top 36″ square
5. Farm themed strip quilt kid sized quilt top (backing fabric selected)

And from the UFO (unfinished objects pile – projects started before the current binge pile

1.  Soft pink and green quilt (baby sized), quilted and bound
2. Borders put on Starstruck quilt.
3. 144 patch quilt top completed

Wow, I’ve been busy. Almost a quilt top a day  completed. I don’t expect to keep up this pace but I’m certainly impressed with what I have accomplished.

From the above list it looks like I’m going to have to get moving on the quilting and binding. I may donate some quilt tops to the guild and let someone bind them as I may not have suitable materials to back them in the stash and right now I want to be prudent with my fabric purchases.

What does one do with an excess of 2″ black and various colour pieces of fabric? If you are me, you end up making a 144 patch 18″ quilt block with no plan in mind for said block.

I showed a picture to my friend Bonnie and she suggested I use some green with the block. I auditioned some green with the block and quite liked it. 

Even though I liked it I had no real plans for the block so nothing more happened with it other than getting put into a box of quilt “spare parts”.

While looking at big block baby quilts I saw this picture

It’s a picture of a quilt available for purchase on Craftsy that is 90″ square. While I wasn’t interested in purchasing a pattern for this quilt, or making something 90″ square it did give me an idea how to set that 144 patch block I had set aside some months ago. Green star points would set this quilt off nicely.

So stash digging I went looking for a suitable green and a neutral, did some math and created 8 half square 9.5″ green and white triangles that will finish at 9″ in the quilt.

Perfect, other than what do with the corners. I knew immediately I didn’t want plain corners. That would be just too bland.  I found a black and multicoloured 16 patch and auditioned that in in the corners but it was two overpowering. I then auditioned a 9-patch block and knew I had found what I was looking for.

The 9-patch blocks finished at 4.5″  which meant I’d need 2.25′ strips around the block to make to make the blocks 9″. So after doing some quilt-y math I cut 2.75″ strips of my neutral and made what are essentially a 9″ modified Happy Blocks.

Here is the finished quilt top. It’s 36″ square and the perfect sized for a baby quilt. Once quilted and bound it will likely go to the guild’s charity quilt program for donation.

Linking to Main Crush Mondays, Oh Scrap, and Monday Making

I heard about Canada’s Big Quilt Bee late last year. The goal is to make 1000 quilts for Ronald McDonald Houses  in 2017. As soon as I read about it I wanted to participate.  I decided I’d make a couple of quilt tops from slab blocks. Each block has to have a pieces of material celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary.  I’m trying to use what I have rather than buy material but I decided this as an acceptable purchase because it was for such a good cause.

I got busy making blocks, first in blue and then in red. The blocks were both fun to make and challenging. Challenging because placement and colours were random. Random is always hard for me because I want perfect random.

And then in red

This has resulted in the following two quilt tops that I’m going to be sending to the coordinator of the quilt bee.

Now to get them into the mail and to the coordinator before the deadline!

These are two quilts for girl at work who just had two twin boys. I was wanting the quilts to be similar but not exactly the same.

I’m happy with how the one fabric unites the two quilts.