Double Pinwheel Blocks and Quilts - Three Finishes

Finally sitting down to write up some posts.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving (US).  I've enjoyed these past few days between Thanksgiving and Dec 1.  They've felt like a gift of extra days.  Now that December is here, its off to the races!

On to the subject at hand.  You'll remember I was doing lots of prep work and basting the week that our power was limited.  Then I did a bunch of quilting.  Over the holiday weekend I finished up four of the quilts.  Three of them are related and I'm going to talk details today.

 You will remember this quilt from a few months ago?  It was a gift for my niece.  The pattern is called Snowballed Pinwheel from Missouri Star Quilts.  I had enlarged it to use 10" squares instead of 5" charms.  When I did that, I knew with a bit of extra sewing I would be able to make extra blocks instead of making throw away fabric piles.

 Here are the pinwheels before the snowballs are added. 

 Each corner got a brown snowball.  Now, if you will notice I didn't just sew the corner to corner line, but added a second line of stitching.  This line should be .5" from the first, to leave you with two 1/4" seams.  So basically I sewed around each block twice.

 Then you can cut off those extra pieces that you've sewn.  I like this picture, coffee, phone and quilting.  Pretty much my life.

 This is the Snowballed Pinwheel block that went into the original quilt.

 This is what the bonus blocks turn into.  I ended up with a pile of blues and a pile of pinks.  They've been waiting around to be finished into charity quilts.  I made three.

 The blue one.  Finished around 50" square.  (my niece claimed this one, as well)

 The pink one. 37" square.

 Pink & Blue with big borders. 30" x 38".

  They were all quilted with a big meander.  I quilted each one in about an hour.  The bindings were all put on by machine.  The batting varies between the quilts.  I did do some frankenbatting - same types together!

Candy Boxes: A Queen Size Quilt Finish

This quilt has been a long time coming.
I mean a loooong time.
As in, I promised my niece a quilt and then promptly forgot about it.

 I also couldn't share much in the way of in progress pictures, because, you know, a gift, and the internet.  No surprises there...  So the above picture is me laying out blocks on my bed, trying to decide on a layout. Also freaking out about how much BROWN there seemed to be.

 The above shot was after I had done all the straight line quilting.  For this quilt I actually kept track of quilting time.  You see, I always underestimate quilting time.  Always. So since I was working on a single project, I kept track.  Straight line quilting alone: 376 minutes (6.2 hours)

 So on to the finished quilt, and lots of pictures.  But none of a full shot.  It is really hard for me to photograph a queen size quilt by myself.  In fact, it turned out to be impossible.

 First I tried to put it on the swing set.  Not working.

 So I ended up using the laundry line.  If you take the upper and attach it to the lower picture, you'll have the whole thing! :)

 After the straight line quilting was done, I went back in for some free motion quilting.
 It added lots of texture, and I was trying to tone down the brown some.

 I did the pink first.  Quilting time: 288 minutes (4.8 hours)

 Then on to the blue.  222 minutes (3.7 hours)  Not sure why the blue was less, except that perhaps I was getting into the rhythm of it.  It is the same amount of blocks for the blue.

 Pretty much my favorite shot.  The Kona Solids backing really shows off the quilting.  Totally a double sided quilt!

 So it was called EARQ for a long time here and on IG for my niece's initials plus Quilt.  Mr. Riley said one day that it looked like boxes of candy, so that's what I went for in a name.

 A few more details:

The pattern is a snowballed pinwheel which is inspired by a Missouri Star Block Magazine pattern, theirs used 5" blocks, but I blew it up to 10" blocks.

Fabrics are Kona Cottons, a Makower UK print stripe and a Brother Sister Design print.

Batting is TWO layers of Pellon soft and crafty.  That stuff is really thin, and I wanted this quilt to be warm and textured.

Thread is all Aurifil.  Pieced in neutral 40 wt. Quilted in White 40 wt., Blue and Pink 50 wt. 

Size is 81" x 94"  Queen.  (I can't remember the last time I made (finished) a large quilt like this.

Total quilting time: 886 minutes (14.76 hours)  That doesn't include any other parts of quilt making, pure quilting time, only.

I do have some left over fabric, along with some bonus blocks that I'll talk about in a future post.