Hachi Quilt with Ukrainian Blue and Yellow Blocks

A couple of months ago O’Sewpersonal Sewing Center offered one of their weekly “colorwheel” Facebook sales bundles in Ukrainian blue and yellow. Their colorwheels contain 8 fat quarters that are somehow related, coordinated or are from a single fabric line. I decided to purchase one and use it to make a quilt.

I added the sunflowers and the stork fabric (fortuitously found on Spoonflower.com) which are Ukrainian favorites, as well as some more blues and yellows from my stash. This is another of the Japanese Hachi style quilts adding to the collection of Hachi quilts that I’ve made this year. The storks are, of course, the “unexpected visitors” in this quilt! (Look back at my November 4, 2021 post to read more about Hachi quilts).

The quilt has simple linear quilting which follow the quilt blocks. I hand quilted around the large stork near the center of the quilt to highlight it. It puffs out a bit from the quilt, which I really like. The backing fabric is bright yellow solid.

Hand Quilting around the stork

This quilt will eventually go to a Ukrainian refugee. I hope it gives them some happiness and hope.

Showcase: Postage Stamp Christmas Quilt

This is such a fun quilt. It’s a postage stamp quilt, comprised of lots of little squares of Christmas fabrics. It was pieced by a member of The Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild . The top was donated to be used as a charity quilt. I picked it up at the last meeting and brought it home to finish it

I added the narrow inner red border and the wider blue border with the jingle bell. It is quilted in the ditch every other row. I thought about quilting every row, but this is going to be wheelchair quilt and I wanted it to stay light and drape well.

The border has two rows of quilting using the Bernina #4 lingerie stitch with an increased stitch length of 2.5 which creates a gentle wave. It adds great texture. The person who gets this quilt will be able to recognize the quilt by just touching the border.

The photo above was taken before the quilt was washed. I like it even better now after it has been washed and dried. It’s such a cheerful quilt!

After being washed. Note the texture from the stitching in the outer border.

Flying Geese + Rail Fence Quilt

A good friend of mine gave me a stack of fat quarters recently. The fabrics were mostly beige and brown with some red and green accents. There was a single “surprise” fat quarter with cowboys herding cattle on the prairie in the stack! That presented a great challenge.

I decided it would make a fun comfort quilt for a child in a daycare. So I dove into my stash and found the three red and green checkered fabrics and the green polka dots to augment the set.

I designed this pattern. I wanted to accent the cowboys and maximize the use of the fabrics in the fat quarters. I mixed 12 inch (finished) flying geese blocks with 12 inch rail fence blocks.

The cowboys were fussy cut at 6 1/2 inches, the flying geese blocks are 6 1/2 inches, and the corner blocks were cut at 3 1/2 inches. These are are the unfinished measurements.

The strips for the rails were all cut a 3 1/2 inches x 12 1/2 inches, unfinished.

The center block in the quilt is a 4 patch (cut at 3 1/2 inches) and the flying geese are set to form a star. I used the four patch block because that’s all the cowboy fabric I had left after I fussy cut the 4 large patches! For the 4 large cowboy blocks, I turned the flying geese to form a “window” (forming a square in a square) to highlight the feature fabric. It was fun setting the flying geese blocks two different ways in this quilt.

The quilt went together really quickly. When I finished it, it just seemed a bit long for it’s width. So I trimmed off about 2 1/2 inches from the two narrow ends of the quilt. The only fabric I needed to purchase was the backing, which I also used as the binding.

I really like this design and would happily use it to make other quilts.

More Ideas for Easy Quilts using Homemade Pre-Cut Fabrics

The pre-cut Charity Quilt project I discussed in the last 2 posts was so much fun that I pulled out my stash of Christmas fabrics to make a another quilt. I made this one for my dog* but it will be an example to show at the Guild meeting when there is a discussion about ways to use the fabrics that were pre-cut this past summer.

This quilt was made with just 10 x 5 inch bricks and 5 inch squares. There are an equal number of each block in each row. There is a narrow strip of fabric at each end of the quilt to give it some definition.  The back has a large print Christmas pattern, so this quilt is actually reversible.

Reverse of quilt at top

*The Christmas quilt I use on my bed has a red Irish Chain with white blocks. I'm going to put this quilt son top of that quilt for my quilt-loving Lab-mix to sleep on!  Hopefully this little quilt will keep my quilt clean!

On a roll, I made one more quilt--this one doll size. An Etsy company sent me four 5 inch charm squares of space fabrics as a bonus to my fabric order.  Making a doll quilt seemed like a perfect way to use those squares plus some of the bits and pieces in my stash.  
 

Micah, a Bamboletta Cuddle Doll, with the Space Doll Quilt, 16 x 19 inches

I decided to cut the 5 inch space fabric squares in half and use 2.5 inch squares from my stash.  Good thought but....what works in algebra doesn't work in quilty math!  I didn't put 2 and 2 together until I had sewn all the strips of blocks for the quilt long to discover that they weren't the same length. Right:  in quilting a 2.5 square + 2.5 square = 4.25 x 2.5 block, not a 5 x 2.5 inch block!

It was too late to cut down the 2.5 x 5 inch blocks so I just added a bit of fabric on alternating ends of each row, making it a scrappy improv Space quilt. Problem solved, but I did have a good laugh....How long have I been quilting???  Long enough, but even an experienced quilter can get tripped up by not checking the math before cutting! 

Micah suggling under the Space Doll Quilt