Disappearing nine patch

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April 11, 2015 · 10:18 PM

Dinosaur Baby Quilt

My dinosaur quilt and the soon to be parents.

My dinosaur baby quilt and the soon-to-be parents.

My daughter and her husband are expecting a baby boy in May and I wanted to make him a special quilt. My daughter suggested that I make one with a dinosaur theme. After doing an online search for ideas I found this wonderful quilt by Daniel Rouse titled Hero’s nemesis.

Quilt by Daniel Rouse (photo used with his permission)

I basically copied what Daniel had done except I used different colors and a different dinosaur.

I started by making a quilt top out of Disappearing Nine Patch Blocks.

Disappearing Nine Patch quilt top.

I wanted my quilt to have a triceratops on it. My family has spent a lot of time in Montana and the Museum of the Rockies has a wonderful display of triceratops skeletons. I found a wall decal of a triceratops skeleton that was the right size and traced around it.

Tracing around the wall decal.

I then made a patchwork of half square triangles that was somewhat larger than this tracing.

I used the product Thangles to make my half square triangles and they made the process go pretty quickly. They come in all sizes, but I used the 1 1/2″ size.

Thangles

I then layered the grey quilt top wrong side up with the teal patchwork on top also with the wrong side up and then put the traced skeleton on top of that.

I pinned these pieces together well and brought it to my sewing machine and stitched around all of the skeleton pieces using my free motion foot.

I stitched around each bone in the skeleton (twice).

I ended up sewing around each piece twice. I just was not confident that one line of stitching would be secure enough. I am not the best at free motion stitching!

After tearing the paper off, I turned the piece around and started to trim the grey away from inside each of the bones which exposed the teal patchwork underneath.

This is the fun part!

As you can see, this is a raw edge reverse appliqué technique.

I used some leftover fabric and HSTs to piece together a fun backing.

The back.

I knew that the quilting would not be very obvious due to how busy the grey top is. I did some straight line quilting in sort of a sunshine fashion arising from the dinosaur and then some landscape type quilting underneath and bound it in teal.

Finished quilt.

This quilt was so much fun to make. Thank you to Daniel Rouse for sharing his process on his blog. He has made several quilts using a stencil technique and each one is absolutely amazing and unique!

My hope is that this quilt will keep my new grandson warm and secure for years to come. I can’t wait to meet him!

Notes: Stencil was 13 X 35″ Finished quilt is 41 X 54″.

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Tagged as Daniel Rouse, dinosaur baby quilt, dinosaur quilt, Disappearing nine patch, half square triangles, reverse applique, stencil quilt, triceratops

January 18, 2015 · 5:18 PM

Disappearing nine patch blocks

I’m starting on a small quilt that I hope will have a lot of texture and decided to make “disappearing nine patch” blocks. This is an easy way to sew a block that looks rather complicated but isn’t that difficult to sew.

Sew a nine patch block together

I randomly chose to use 3 inch square blocks to make my nine patches. I cut up as many gray or black and gray fabrics that I had and of course I had to purchase some more in order to have a great variety. That silvery dotted fabric is one I bought in Hawaii on a trip.

Cut the block down the middle both vertically and horizontally.

Once cut, I rotated the upper left and lower right pieces to put the small square at the outside corners.

I rotated two of the pieces.

You have other options at this point. You could orient these smaller blocks in any way you desire and you would get different looks.

Sewn together.

The nice thing about the way I did these is that there is no fussing with lining up the seams to “nest” together except at the very center of the block. This may not seem like a big deal, but think about it. Every time two seams meet, it is desirable to have them ironed in different directions and this can get pretty complicated with this many seams.

Can you imagine sewing the block above by cutting out all of those pieces individually and piecing them together? It would take forever and be so inaccurate. At least if I did it, it would be.

15 blocks on my design wall.

My finished blocks are 7 1/2″ square unfinished or will be 7″ square finished. I have 15 done and 33 left to go. If I lay them out with 6 blocks across and 8 blocks down, the finished quilt will be 42 X 56″ which I’m told is a good size for a baby. This is not what the finished quilt will look like however. There is going to be a big twist to make it special for the exceptionally special baby it is being made for. More to come!

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Tagged as 9 patch, disappearing 9 patch, Disappearing nine patch, nine patch