Ride the Wave!

Happy Friday! I continue to work on my Square in a Square blocks.  I have all of the blocks for the quilt top made, and now I am squaring them up to 12 1/4." I was going to skip this step but I truly hate working with pinked edges . . . and they have finished at just shy of 12 1/2 inches and it is just too big... I didn't plan this project very well :)  I have also decided that I am going to use the 10 extra blocks for the quilt back.  I think I have that all planned out. . . who knows how many times that will change before I finish haha AND I received the backing and border fabric for the scrappy bargello yesterday!!  Hmmm, the possibility of TWO finishes next week!!

I wanted to share with you a quilt I made for one of my nephews.  He spends most of his spare time playing in the water in the summer and in the snow in the winter so I wanted to make something with some waves in it :)  This quilt is made with the Split Seconds ruler by Creative Grids.  Yep, it's another Karla Alexander ruler :) You can see her giving a tutorial on how to use this ruler here.  There are several different styles of quilts that can be made with this ruler and it is fat quarter friendly.  This is the only quilt I have used it for to date, but definitely plan on trying out the other styles!  I used Kaffe Fassett Shot Cottons (a mix of the dark and light fat quarter bundle) for this quilt bought at Hawthorne Threads (If you have not checked out this site for fabric, I highly recommend! Make sure to check out the sale items too! No, I'm not getting paid in any way to say this.  Fast shipping, usually ships the next day by 2 day mail - pretty instant gratification for shopping on line!).  The backing was pieced with left over backing and yardage from other quilts bought at LQSs. I used wool batting and the quilt finished around 52" square.  And here it is:

I FMQed it by following the curves in the piecing

Those white flecks you see are snow! :)

I love this picture!

Label in the binding and a peek at the back :)

This is one of the quilts that I did not get good pictures of prior to gifting.  My sister-in-law was gracious enough (read tired of being harassed lol) to take the three pictures of the quilt in the snow :) I think she did a great job and told her I was going to hire her! 

I quilted the quilt with black thread.... talk about nerve wracking! haha When I was quilting it I was not so sure about the choice of black since I thought every single little mistake I made was going to jump right off of the quilt. There are definitely jumps and not so smooth starts in this quilt but really, once it was washed, they did not stand out!  Amazing what washing a quilt does for hiding those pesky little jump starts, haha.

This quilt was really a lot of fun to make! I stacked four different fabrics light to dark, cut the curves with the ruler at a slant.  I did mark the cuts beforehand to make sure that I had enough width to get the 6 cuts in.  I started with squares that were 13" x 18" and they finished at 12 1/2" x 12 1/2." The curves are very gentle and very easy to manage, especially with a block this big.  This was the first time I had worked with shot cottons and I was a little nervous.  I was surprised at how thin they were! They are beautiful though, I don't think there is a way to photograph fabric to truly see the different colors in the weave.  I used A LOT of starch on the fabric prior to cutting.  I think this helped with preventing stretching of the bias as I was sewing.  I was very careful and went what I thought was pretty slowly, I was amazed though that this quilt top came together within two days! I sashed and bound the quilt with black shot. You can see the quilt I finished with the remainder of the fat quarters from the bundles here.

I had one major oops moment in making this quilt.... Doesn't there always have to be one? haha The first set of blocks that I cut, I very carefully marked where I wanted to cut and set out to cutting (a 45 mm rotary cutter works with this ruler, no need for a smaller sized cutter).  Cutting the curves was much easier than I had anticipated - I of course did not do any practice cuts as suggested in the video tutorial. I went to 'shuffle' the fabrics and, what the how did this happen??? I had cut one too many times!!! And I had NO extra fabric. And I was now in panic mode!  What am I going to do??  Well, after talking myself out of having several adult beverages haha, I decided I would just sew the two pieces of fabric together... an elemental design change right? lol Needless to say I was very careful with the next blocks! This also meant that I had to make the blocks a little smaller than what they could have been had the first four not had to be squared up smaller due to that extra seam. 

I really liked using this ruler and will make more quilts with it! I just need more time!!!

Linking up with Off The Wall Fridays, Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop!, LAFF over at Richard Quilts and Finish it Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.  If you are visiting from one of these sites, welcome! Grab a beverage and stay awhile :) I love your comments and respond to them all via email.  If you haven't checked out all of the wonderful projects people have finished, click on one of the links and get inspired!! 

Until next time, keep on quilting!