Another Little Finish

I've mentioned how I feel about red and white quilts, right? 

This one was a quick little project to take my mind off of things. It measures about 10 1/2" square and uses the same snowball and nine patch combination as Full Blown Quilt Lust, except this time they're not set on point and there's a border of half snowball blocks.  

For more finishes, check out  Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  , and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Inspired Friday.

Precision Piecing (or not)

I don't lose sleep worrying about whether my corners all match up perfectly. If I'm sewing something like a Drunkard's Path block, I'll use every pin in the house, but when I'm making most of my quilts, I match up the intersections with my fingertips and hold them in place while I'm sewing. It works fairly well. 

When I made the pink and white Full Blown Quilt Lust, I did it my usual way. A few of the intersections aren't quite right and I started to wonder how much of a difference it would make if I slowed down and used pins.

So I made another one.  In case you missed last week's version, there are 205 pieces in a 7" square, and you can find my tutorial here. 

Honestly, I'm not convinced. My corners are a little more accurate, but the difference isn't as dramatic as I would have expected for the extra time and fuss. And I wound up with a pucker. In a quilt this tiny, any little pucker is huge! I think it's that center snowball block in the bottom row. 

I absolutely love this itty bitty stippling. It's just fun -- and it flattens puckers into submission. 

I'm linking this post to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Get Crafting Friday, Pinworthy Projects, Freedom Fridays, Inspired Friday. and Friday Favs.

Full Blown Quilt Lust

Yesterday, I thought I was in love with this little quilt.  Now that I've got it quilted, it's a case of full blown quilt lust.

In case you didn't read the last post, this is a scaled down version of Marilyn with the color placement in the nine-patch blocks reversed. The blocks are 1 1/2" and the quilt itself finishes at about 7" square. I could have, by the absolute skin of my teeth, used the same fat quarter for the top and back and binding, but I decided to use a piece from a coordinating pink fat quarter. The more different pinks in my stash the better, right?

I did the teeniest stippling I could manage. The thing can stand up by itself at this point, but since it’s probably going to do time as a mug rug before it makes it up to the sewing room wall, I don’t see that as a problem.

Want to make your own?  Start with a fat quarter in a tiny, tone-on-tone print. You’re going to be cutting it into little pieces and don’t want color changes in the print to distract from the piecing.

Cutting from the 18” side of the fat quarter, cut six 1" strips and one 3" strip.  You’ll be using four of those to strip piece the nine-patch blocks and cutting two into thirty-six 1" squares for the snowball blocks.  From white background fabric, cut five 1” x 18” strips and nine 2” squares .  From the 3” strip, cut three 3” squares for side setting triangles and two 2” squares for corner setting triangles. Cut the 3” squares into four smaller triangles as shown and the 2” squares once on the diagonal.

Sew the 1” strips together lengthwise. Make two sets with white strips on the outside and one set with pink strips on the outside.  Cut into 1” sections and assemble sixteen nine patch blocks.

Place a 1” pink square in each corner of the 2” white squares and stich and flip to make the snowball blocks. It’s going to look really wrong, and the nine-patch blocks will look odd too,  but when you sew the blocks together into the top they’ll look they should. 

Lay out the blocks as shown (including the corner triangles, which didn't make it into this picture. If you need more details on the assembly of the blocks and top, you can find it in the Marilyn tutorial. I found it easiest to lay out the nine patch blocks in three rows of three and then fill in the rest of the blocks from there.

See! Once you get the rows sewn together, things start to look like they should --

I cut 2" strips for the binding. If you want to use the same fat quarter for backing, I'd suggest cutting the backing square first and then making your binding from what's left. There should be just barely enough. 

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a little quilt for my fractured dolls

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my search for a set of Tim Holtz Fractured Dolls, which I wanted to buy and make quilts for.

My order came, and Sunday night I made them a little quilt.



These dolls are teeny-tiny. The larger one is only about three inches tall. I wanted a quilt with "real" pieced blocks, as small as I could make them. These nine-patches finish at 1 1/2" square. And the top only took three left over Jelly Roll strips -- one dark and two matching light prints.

Want to make your own?



From one light strip, cut four 1 x 14" strips. From one dark strip, cut five 1 x 14" strips. From the second light strip, cut twelve 2" squares. (If you're working with yardage or scraps instead of precut 2 1/2" strips, just cut it into the 1" and 2" strips that these instructions call for.)



Sew the 1" strips into the three sets shown and carefully press open. The pieced strips should measure 2" wide. Cut each strip set into thirteen 1" sections.



Assemble those sections into thirteen nine patch blocks. If your cutting and piecing are completely accurate, the unfinished blocks should measure exactly 2" square. A lot of mine didn't, but I'm making a quilt for a broken plastic doll, so I just concentrated on making my points match as best I could and it came out fine.



Lay out the blocks on a scrap of batting to keep them organized while you assemble the top.



Press the top well, then cut a piece of backing fabric the same size as your top, which should measure 8" square. I didn't want to mess with binding on something this tiny (it's a quilt for broken dolls, not a mug rug!), so I "birthed" the doll quilt.

Lay the top face up, then the backing face down, then a piece of thin white flannel. Sew around the whole sandwich 1/4" from the edge, leaving a 2-3" opening for turning. You can find more details about birthing a baby (or doll) quilt at Sunshower Quilts.



To keep the quilting from overwhelming the nine patch blocks, I quilted diagonal lines across the setting squares. Once I decide whether or not this is the quilt for my fractured dolls, I plan on attaching them to the quilt.



I wish I could find some of the real thing, but I'm too practical to spend what they're asking on ebay.... I think...

This post is linked to to Try it out Tuesday at Jo's Country Junction.