Neptune Quilt Finished!

This is the Disappearing Nine Patch lap quilt made using the Neptune line of fabrics by Tula Pink. This project used 2 charm packs, 1 yard of dark blue/algae damask fabric and 2 yards of the fish scale pattern for the backing and binding. This is when I started this quilt.

Here is the finished quilt posing in an old wicker chair. This chair sits on my porch and holds a big dish of birdseed in the winter. Other summers I have used it to hold a huge Boston Fern. I got this chair from my maternal grandparents' estate after their deaths. It is too rickety to sit in, but I am keeping it.

Here is a detail of the backing and the stippling free motion quilting. I used several different colors of threads on the top when quilting to accent the shades in the blocks. The bobbin thread was a pale pink that blended well with the fish scale fabric.

If you click on this picture you should be able to see the details of the stippling. I do not prewash fabrics before quilting unless they are from reclaimed bedding or garments. If it is designer fabric off the bolt, I do not prewash. I like the way the quilts turn out when you wash them after the quilting and binding. The cotton batting and cotton fabrics shrink up just a bit in the washer/dryer and give the finished product such a nice texture.

Love this, wonky corner block and all. Keeping it for myself.

Doll Quilt Swap

I have signed up for a doll quilt swap on Flickr. Go here if you want to see some of the beautiful small quilts that people have made and swapped in the past.

No, I don't play with dolls, nor do I have a girl child to supply with doll quilts. Neither do most of the people who do these quilts. Doll quilts are small, can be finished much more easily and quickly than bed sized quilts and offer their makers chances to try out new techniques on a small scale. They also look great as wall art!

I have made a couple of practice quilts to get ready for the swap. Here they are.

The first is the leftover block from the pieces of eight quilt. Since taking this photo I have completed this block with a binding that is the same as the backing fabric.

The last two photos show a disappearing 9 patch quilt. It is about 23 inches square. These three different fabrics are all blocks cut from vintage sheets. I got these on Etsy from a lady that sells an assortment of fatquarters, 6 inch and 12 inch pre-cut blocks from vintage sheets. I got some wonderful squares, ready to sew with.

I quilted the three layer sandwich with red, white and blue thread in wonky diagonal lines. The center photo shows what it looked like after quilting, but before trimming and binding. I have to say that one of the attractions of doing the doll quilts is that they are easy to maneuver under the machine when you are quilting.

Works in Progress

Here are 2 quilt tops I have completed this week. The first one is a scrap quilt made almost entirely from the aforementioned box of fabric scraps. It is in the log cabin pattern. The red fabric in the center is a fat quarter from Joanne Fabrics and the blue border is the last of the blue chambray sheet I used in this quilt. I have not found a backing fabric for it which suits me yet.


The next quilt top I completed today from 2 charm packs in the Neptune collection from Tula Pink. I am crazy about her fabrics. In addition to the charm packs I also had a yard of her navy blue with green pattern with sea turtles and sea horses hidden in the design.


This quilt top was made using the Disappearing Nine Patch pattern. I had enough 5 inch squares to create 7 largish blocks. I quartered them and arranged the resulting 28 blocks to suit me. I used 24 of them to make a 4x6 rectangle and had four quarter blocks left over. Whew, this math is making my head spin! (I teach reading !) Then I decided that the left over 4 blocks would be great at the corners of the borders.


That was a difficult trick getting all those corners lined up and if you look carefully at the picture you will see the wonky corner that resulted. No backing is picked out for this yet, either.

Disappearing 9 Patch

Here is a small quilt made from a charm pack of Charisma by Chez Moi for Moda. The pattern I found on this blog is called the Disappearing 9 Patch. Basically, you sew 9 patch blocks (some of the easiest to sew blocks of all) and then chop them up, rearrange them and sew them back together. The result is decidedly not your typical boring 9 patch quilt. I used 36 of the 5 inch charms to make this 4 block lap/doll quilt. It is roughly 45 inches per side, minus seam allowances.

I pieced the four blocks and then put together the quilt by making a "sandwich." The bottom layer was the quilt batting and then I placed the top right sides up. The top layer was the backing fabric face down on the quilt top. I trimmed the batting and the backing fabric to be very close in size to the top and pinned it all together. I sewed around 3 sides making sure to catch all three layers in the seam. (I did have to repair one area where the batting was showing through after I turned it.) I turned the quilt right sides out and repinned it to make it smooth enough to quilt. Then I machine quilted down the seams to make it look more dimensional. I left the bottom open until almost all the top was quilted. Then I trimmed more of the batting away, turned under the last unfinished side and pinned it securely. I topstitched the last side closed and finished the machine quilting.

What I find very interesting about this pattern is that depending on what your 9 patch squares look like, you can vary the look of the pattern. Since the charm pack has all different squares of fabric, my quilt is very "scrappy" looking. If you use traditional color choices for a 9 patch, you get a distinctive pattern after you quarter the blocks and resew them. Here are some examples from Google Images.

I will definitely try this pattern again with a larger end result. I only had one charm pack of this particular fabric. Don't know who is getting this one yet.