Quilting Part 2 (The 10 Minute Quilt Blocks)

The best kept secret in quilting gifts is Suzanne McNeill's 10 Minute Quilt Blocks.  I made 3 different versions of this quilt for Christmas this year.  Ms. McNeil put together a very good tutorial here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbTHlGGKMPM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I tweaked her patterns a little bit for my quilts.  The first one that I did was a king sized quilt for my brother and sister-in-law (I heart you, Dave and Chy!).

I used the Birchtree Lane Collection from Connecting Threads for this project.  I ordered 5 layer cakes from them (knowing that there were 19 squares per layer cake).  I then ordered 11 yards of one of the prints for the middle squares, border, and back.  I also got two yards of a dark brown fabric for the binding .

The first step to this quilt was to divide my layer cakes into like color groupings of 4.  I picked blue, green, latte, and dark brown as my groupings.

I cut 3 yards sections for the back and then cut 6.5 inch strips from one of the 3 yard sections longwise for the border.  The last yard I used to make 20 10in squares for the middle of each grouping.  I really like the look of having matching middles and borders to all of my squares.  I make this quilt 4 blocks by 5 blocks making the final measurement for this quilt 107" x 88".  Since this was a king sized quilt, I sent it off to be machine quilted by a friend, since there is no way my machine could accommodate it's size.

The best thing about these quilt blocks is that they make really cool seasonal quilts.  I made a Christmas quilt out of fat quarters.

Christmas Throw

I bought 2 sets of 5 coordinating fat quarters from Joann's.  Because I couldn't cut 10 inch squares from the fat quarters, I cut 9 inch squares instead.  I cut 4 squares from each quarter and then cut a 3 inch strips from the remaining part of the quarter for the border.   I bought a yard of fabric for a 6.5 inch border 3 yards of fabric for the back.

After much consideration and laying out different combinations I decided to put them together in 2 different blocks and again use the same color on each of the middle diamonds.  In laying out the quilt it is very important to check and see that the patters on the fabric is laid out in different directions, especially with dramatic stripes.

The greatest part about this throw was that I spent under $20 to buy the fabric and I used leftover batting from another project.  I put the entire quilt together, including the binding in one weekend.  For binding on this quilt, I used the leftover 3 inch strips and sewed them together in a patchwork pattern, making sure that each of my angles went in a different direction.

For the quilting, I decided that this quilt was small enough to sew on my machine.  I used clear thread on the top and green thread on the bottom and sewed diagonally thorough all of my squares making a fun pattern on the back!

Cheers!  Jaime