My friend Kristen just had her first little one last month. She and her husband kept the gender of the baby a surprise so she decorated her nursery to be gender neutral and I drew upon the colors she was using for the baby quilt I made for her. Frank and I got to meet the baby (they had a girl!) a week and a half ago and she was so sweet and beautiful.
I made the quilt using a modified version of a disappearing nine patch. A disappearing nine patch involves making a nine patch block and then cutting it into four smaller blocks. I like to oversize things and then cut it down for a little more accuracy so I adjusted my piecing accordingly.
To make the quilt I used eight different colored fabrics, a patterned white fabric and two different dark turquoise patterns.
Using 44" wide cotton I cut one 5-1/2" wide strip from each of the eight colors, one 5" wide strip from each of the two turquoise fabrics and four 5-1/2" wide and four 5" wide strips from the white fabric.
Next, I started assembling the strips, making four pieced strips by sewing one of the color strips on either side of a 5" wide white strip. I then cut eighteen 5-1/2" tall strips from the pieced color strips.
I then made two turquoise center pieced strips by sewing 5-1/2" wide strips of white on either side of the 5" wide strips of turquoise. I then cut nine 5" tall strips from the pieced turquoise center strips.
To make the nine patches I joined a color strip on either side of a turquoise center strip.
After making nine of the nine patches for the quilt I then cut them apart to make the blocks. I lined up my quilting ruler 2" from each of the seams and cut both vertically and horizontally.
When I was done cutting the nine patch apart the white was 2" wide and the turquoise was a 2" x 2" square.
I then trimmed down the outside edges down to make the disappearing nine patch blocks 7" x 7".
Next I made twelve edge blocks by cutting down the leftover pieced color strips. I cut the blocks 7" tall (5" of color fabric and 2" of white) and 5-1/4" wide.
I started assembling the rows by sewing together five disappearing nine patch blocks (turquoise square to the bottom right) with an edge block on the end (white strip down).
After making seven rows I made the bottom row by sewing together five edge blocks (white strip to the right) with a 5-1/4" x 5-1/4" square from one of the color fabrics on the end.
To finish the quilt top I sewed all of the rows together.
I finished the quilt with a light blue fabric for the backing and bound it with one of the turquoise fabrics that I used. For the quilting I sewed diagonal lines at a random spacing across the quilt.
I am really happy with how the quilt came out. I think it is bright and fun and I hope that Kristen's little girl will enjoy snuggling with it.
