Easter Eggs quilt

Just in time for Easter with a week to spare!  I say this with surprise because I too often finish projects late or give up on them when I know I can't complete them by the time I want to use them or give them as gifts. 

This Easter Eggs quilt just popped into my head last week. As I sat staring, with a basket of odd pieces of trim sitting in my line of vision, I came up with the idea to "decorate" some nickel squares.  This turned into decorating "egg" blocks and my Easter Eggs quilt was born.  Funny how the design process works sometimes!  Now I have a table topper to decorate my table for Easter or maybe I'll put it on the wall and use it as a wall hanging.

To decorate the "eggs", I used scraps of ribbon and rickrack of various sizes and even some scraps of chenille strips.  I left a few eggs without any embellishment when I felt the pattern of the fabric was enough.  A fat quarter was used in the center and was the color inspiration for the fabrics and trims.  This project would be a good use for all those decorative stitches on my machine that I never use.  Maybe sometime I'll decorate some eggs that way.  Here are some close-ups of a few of the eggs-

As I was looking at this quilt on my table, I decided that Easter Egg coasters would be cute so I made this one.

            Easter Eggs quilt as a table topper                                  Easter Eggs coaster



Nickel Snowballs quilt

The Nickel Snowballs quilt is a great way to use a lot of your fabric scraps.  I used 70 blue nickel squares and 245 white nickel squares, all from my stash. I love the look of the scrappy white on white fabrics.  Of course, any color could be used.  I just seem to have lots of blue fabric and I barely put a dent in it even though  the quilt ended up so big that I had to lay it on a bed to photograph it.  It has not been quilted yet but I'll post it again when it has.  It's laying on a queen bed but is actually a twin size.  Doesn't look too bad in my blue and white bedroom. I can't make too many more this size or I'll never catch up up on my challenge!

 

Nickel Snowballs quilt



Nickel Snowballs is another quilt from the Nickel Nine Patch series of quilts that all begin with a nine patch block of nickel squares.  Just start with a 5" square of fabric and add smaller squares to all four corners.  Sew diagonally across the corners as shown and then press the squares to the corners to form triangles and you have a snowball block.

                            

After making the snowball block, I incorporated it into a nine patch block. This nine patch block makes it easy to achieve the look of sashing and borders without the hassle of long strips.  I used 5" X 14" strips to replace 3-5" squares in this example.  I had enough fabric to do this which really cut down on my cutting and sewing time.

                          

My next quilt project is much smaller and just in time for Easter.  It can be used as a wall hanging or table topper.   I'm using up a bunch of small odd pieces of trim that I don't know why I even kept.  Here's a peek-



Flower Power

Flower Power is the flower version of my Twisted Nickel quilt.  Both quilts are made using the exact same block!  Color placement makes all the difference.  They are part of my Nickel Nine Patch series of quilts.  That's the name I'm giving all my quilts that start out as a nine patch made up of 5" squares.

Here's how to make this block also called Washington's Puzzle.  The scraps you see off to the side of the ruler will someday be a second quilt. What a deal, two quilts from one set of blocks.

                       

                        

Here's the quilt I am working on to use the scraps from the Twisted Nickel quilt.  Just an idea right now.

I'm Back

It's been awhile but I hope to get back on a more regular schedule with my posts.  While I was gone, I was featured as a guest blogger on The Quilting Gallery.  Check it out if you want to find out more about this challenge.

I've been back from the AQS quilt show in Lancaster Pennsylvania for a week already and am happy to say my husband survived his first quilt show!  I don't know where the time goes. It's not that I haven't been busy, my Twisted Nickel quilt is now quilted and bound.  This picture doesn't do justice to the fantastic quilting done by my long arm quilter, Linda of L&R Designs, so I've included two close-ups of the quilting design.

I have been working on another version of this quilt and on what to do with the leftover scraps from this project.  I hope to show you what I come up with next week.

I also sewed binding on a quilt on our drive to Pennsylvania.  It was one of my UFO's.  I think I started it maybe 3 years ago.  I know it's been quilted since before Christmas of 2009!  But, it's done now and hanging on the wall hiding an ugly electrical box and cable outlets.  If it looks a little crooked, it might be because it's stapled to the wall!  I don't want to take time to make a sleeve and it probably won't be a wall quilt after we move anyway. The squares are stacked and sewn so the raw edges can fray.  It's a very easy quilt and uses alot of fabric. 

And, last but not least, I have been writing patterns for the quilts of this challenge and working on a web site for them.  The site is up at http://www.doublenickelquilts.com/ and will eventually have all of the patterns for sale as downloads.

And, oh yeah, did I mention I work full-time?

Twisted Nickel quilt

The block in this quilt is a variation of a traditional block called Washington's Puzzle. There are a few different ways to make this block.  You can cut nine individual pieces for each block and sew them together or you can paper piece the block. I chose to make nine patch blocks and then made angled cuts to form a new square.  A consequence of this construction method is leftover pieces from trimming the blocks and bias edges on the outside edges of the block.  Don't see a way to get around having bias edges somewhere.  I hope to design a way to use the leftover pieces in another quilt.  Do you see the secondary pattern of flowers that developed by rotating the blocks?  There's an idea floating around in my head about making the flowers more predominate in another quilt. 

This quilt has not been quilted yet.  Life beyond quilting has been very busy.  My husband bowled in the State bowling tournament this weekend and our house is finally on the market with my sewing area being neat and tidy but almost unusable.  I have to get so much stuff out and put it back every time I sew.  What a pain!

On another note, we were fortunate to have my husband's oldest daughter and her two youngest children stay with us for a few days.  They are moving from Illinois to Denver Colorado and were heading into bad weather so stopped and stayed with us until today.  It was good to see them since they will live much farther away now. 

There won't be a post next week because my husband and I are off to the AQS quilt show in Lancaster Pennsylvania.  We are very excited for the trip because two of his daughters live about an hour from Lancaster so we plan to spend time with them and six of our grandchildren.  I'm ready for a break from this challenge and hope to come back refreshed and ready to sew.  I have a lot of catching up to do to keep on track to make 55 quilts in a year.