A couple of my quilty friends try to make a quilt a month for various charities, so I thought I’d try that this year. The group with which I make donation quilts sends them to a Ronald McDonald House to be given to sick children. The House wants all quilts to be 40″ x 40″, which doesn’t seem too big to do one a month. Here goes….
For January I took some of my orphan blocks and related fabrics and made this quilt. The blocks also happen to be on my UFO list for 2015, so there’s TWO projects accomplished at once 🙂
The blocks finish 12″ square, which means that with a 2″ border the quilt comes out 40″ x 40″ as planned. The 9-patch blocks were made using the stack and shuffle method I learned years ago from Karla Alexander’s books. It’s easy and fun. To end up with blocks this size, I started with 15″ x 15″ squares of fabric (since they’re cut wonky on purpose it takes a bigger starting square than you might think).
The center block has little inset strips using a technique I modified from one of Judy Niemeyer’s ideas. To make a quarter inch inset that doesn’t “wobble”, do this:
Cut a 1″ strip of fabric and lay one edge along the raw edge of the piece where you want a narrow inset. Stitch through both the strip and the quilt piece 1/2″ away from the edge, either by using the 1/2″ mark on your machine’s throat plate or by marking the center of the strip.
Fold and press along the seam-line so that you now have 3 raw edges, all lined up.
I don’t usually trim away the extra fabric because I like the stability, but it DOES make for some weighty intersections if you choose not to trim away the bottom 1 or 2 layers. Then assemble the block as you normally would, using 1/4″ seams. The strip you added will show up as a 1/4″ inset.
Let me know if you try either of these blocks. I thought they were fun!