Finished Disappearing 9-Patch Quilt Top

I finished my Walk in the Woods disappearing 9-patch quilt top on Friday (6/15) and I just love it!  It looks so fancy and was so fast and easy!  As part of the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop for new bloggers they have a link up on Mondays.  I thought this would be a perfect post to share to celebrate my recent finish.

I'm also linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day.  I've seen a lot of the blogs I read linking up and I thought it would be fun to add my name to the list and to check out more of the bloggers there.

While there and linking up I found out about the Small Blog Meet.  It's for bloggers with fewer than 50 followers to meet other bloggers like them and get to know more people.  With 10 lovely followers I fit the bill!  I may be up all night reading all the fun posts that other bloggers have linked up to all these things! ;)

Now, on to the quilt.  I used four charm packs and one layer cake of A Walk in the Woods by Aneela Hoey for Moda.  I got the layer cake on a super sale around Christmas time but after working it out it would have been much easier just to get four charm packs instead of cutting the layer cake in fours.

I love reading about other people's processes so here's how the quilt broke down with fun pictures...

6/1 - I drew up my pattern based on the idea found here.  It came out to be 71.5" by 84.5" which will be perfect for my little girl's bed.  I relied on the pattern a lot for placement and to know which row I was on while sewing to keep track of it all. It was time consuming but well worth it.  The red dash fabric will be the binding and the gray will be the back.

I have a very organized and logical mind and really can't handle random.  I knew I wanted this quilt to be random but I just didn't know how to achieve that.  While thinking this through I stacked all of the charms by color then one pile of large prints, see how I just can't do random?  I just sat and looked until I came up with a great idea.

To create random I got a brown grocery bag and I recruited my family.  I gave my hubby and I two charm stacks each and then each of my big kids one stack.  We took turns putting our charms into the bag one by one.  Then we each stirred it up.  Voila!  Random and family fun in one!

There were some large prints that I didn't want to end up getting cut.  If they were to be cut down there wouldn't be enough of anything showing to make it work.  I put this in a bowl and stirred then make sure to use them in the corner pieces filing in the other pieces from the brown paper bag.

After sewing and pressing I laid them out into groups of nine.  I tried to keep with the random theme but I didn't let any of the same fabric touch each other.  It was kind of fun but difficult because each of my four kids tried to get involved.  I then stacked them up in groups putting each group in a different orientation so I could tell which was which.  I then cracked up my ipod and got sewing some more.

This is the end of one day's work.  The first picture was taken at 11:37am and this one was at 10:12pm with various stops in between to make dinner, do dishes, play with and get the kid ready for bed.  See what I mean about fast?!  I cut one of the nine-patch squares up so I could see what it would look like.  It's at the top of the picture.  I got through half of the pile of nine-patch sewing which was pretty good.

6/2 - By 9pm the next night I had all the nine-patches sewn and then cut and turned.  After a lot of playing around I ended with this layout.  I wanted it to be more or less random so I just grabbed bits and started putting them down.  The directional fabrics I kept all face up (my OCD taking over) and I balanced out the colors here and there.  It worked out pretty well.

 

6/15 - After my hugely productive two days I had to take a break.  There were other more pressing projects and this one was briefly put to the back burner.  However after two more days of sewing the quilt top was finished.  The rows took me about ten minutes each to sew including pressing (so fast!) and then to put the rows together with pressing took me an additional five minutes per row.  I was so happy with how fast it went together but how fun and complex it looks!

6/15 - Here's a fun jaunty angle.  Now I really have to get on taking that long arm quilting class so I can get this bad boy all the way finished!

Thanks for stopping by!  Head on over to Plum and June for some great blog advice and to see other links ups from the Hop!  Also stop by Lily's Quilts to see posts from Fresh Sewing Day and Small Blog Meet!