Scrambled Nines - It's a Wrap!

Ta-Da!
Oh, how I love a finish!
Especially when it fulfills a goal set for AYOLF! (May Party link #74!)

Scrambled Nines is my third finish using a Layer Cake of Nursery Prints from Quilting Treasures. It is my favorite of the three...
When I posted the May goal, it was stuck on Mr. Juki awaiting a quilting decision. I went with loopy quotation quilting.

I ran into some trouble with the yellow and grey checkered fabric from Clothworks. It is nice fabric, very soft with a bit of an organic feel to it. I found it shrunk more than average, and more in one direction than in another. Once I finished quilting the blocks, I realized it would look much better with blocking, since the center is quite heavily quilted. Blocking went well, and I was able to ease it all flat prior to binding. I was really surprised when it shrunk 1/2" more in one direction than the other during the blocking process, and I had to trim a bit more off the borders than I had anticipated. This shot shows a bit of hand-made waviness, although it looks worse than it is - the waves are enhanced by the wind, and by the folds of an all-cotton batting:

The backing is like a whole-nother quilt, eh?

I love the little chicks:

Now that I have done a half dozen or so machine bindings, I have found my favorite method. It is tight, and it looks almost traditional from the front.

Non-traditional on the back, but nice and even, and close to the edge.

Linking this finish up with Kelly at NTT,  TGIFF hosted this week by Sarah at Georgia Girl Quilts (she is running a giveaway there too!), Sarah for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? , and Link a Finish Friday with Richard and Tanya, and Elizabeth at Such a Sew and Sew for A Stitch in Time!

WIP with a finish goal for April

Sometimes fabric seems to go forever!

MORE leftover baby blocks! Square in a Square setting

Last year, I cut into a Layer Cake of nursery prints (from Quilting Treasures?). Without a plan in mind, I whipped up a bunch of nine patch blocks using a speedy method I shared here. It was one year ago almost to the date - I finished two baby flimsies at that time..

Baby Nines!

I completed the first quilt in short order, Baby Nines, & was really thrilled to sell it in my Etsy shop.

I came across the second flimsy last week, added a simple border and sandwiched it. It is unnamed officially, but reminds me of the railway, so I have been calling it Railroad Baby...

Railroad Baby has been selected as my one main goal for a Finish in April with AYOLF over at Fiber of All Sorts.

I was still left with 24 blocks, and yesterday I played with the square-in-a-square idea, pulling four fabrics that seem to suit them all well and hopefully pull them all together.  Here is a close up, so you can get a nice peek at my new Three Blind Mice (Catnap) fabric. ..

Lizzy House Catnap, purchased on Ebay $6.99 yard. Sale is over, but it is still a SHOP worth a peek, & I just noticed some nice Tula bundles offered..

MMM, so cute! I think this last baby quilt will be 'Scrambled Nines' :-)

Thank you for reading today, check out more Work in Process at  Lee's Freshly Pieced (and a great giveaway this week too!)

EZ Method for Nine Patch Blocks

A new method for me, I decided to try the nine patch blocks I found at an older post from TLC Stitches . I pulled out a layer cake I have had for some time; a collection of 10" squares from Keepsake Quilting called 'Sweet Baby'. Following her instructions, I began with two 5 1/2" squares, and completed two 4 1/2" squares from each pair.

I added border pieces to one block from each pair and set aside the other.

Two crib quilt  tops were created this way (Not sure yet what I will do with borders)

 

I really had fun trying this out, and I do recommend it for nine patches with only two fabrics. I found it to be quite accurate and only a few of my blocks even needed trimming to complete.

I used a yellow solid for the boy quilt and found there really was not enough contrast, even after adding an additional bar and square to each block. So, I added a teal stripe, and more yellow squares to liven it up and to help make the yellow diagonals a bit more pronounced.

I chose a teal fabric for the girl quilt which I am currently piecing. I thought it would be nice to coordinate these quilts, perhaps for twins:-)

The really great part is that I now have 24 additional nine patches to make a third (and fourth?) baby quilt with. I love these 'sweet baby' prints!

And another bonus: After cutting away 2.5" square of each (I am collecting 2.5" baby prints for a future, 'truly' scrap quilt I plan to make), I still have good size pieces of each print leftover from the original 10" squares. I will likely use these in the border of the third quilt.