Thursday, December 29, 2011

9-Patch Puzzle


Wow, it's been quiet around here! I have lots of fun Christmas gifts to share now that they are safely with their respective owners! To start off, I'm going to share one of my favorites.
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I'm sooo excited to finally share this quilt! One of my most bestest friends has had a very rough year, and I wanted to do something special for her and her two kids for Christmas. I decided to make each of the kids a quilt, and this is what I came up with for her daughter!
I started off with a layer cake of Sherbet Pips, which I was holding on to for a very special project. I was planning to make a Disappearing 9-Patch using the 10" layer cake slices as a base, but decided that I wanted to cut the prints into smaller chunks. That's when I got the idea to create my own sort of "disappearing" 9-patch, which I'm now calling the 9-Patch Puzzle!
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I began by making 40 blocks using a method similar to the Crazy Nine-Patch at Oh Fransson!. (In the photo above, the pink solid border surrounds 1 9-patch puzzle block.) Then, to keep with the theme of "9's", I grouped the 9-patch puzzle blocks into 9 units that fit together much like a puzzle. I wanted to highlight those 9 different units, so I added a thin solid border around each unit. Not paying close attention to my design, I ended up with a few gaps between the units. I used the scarf print from Sherbet Pips to fill those gaps, which I love!
A 2x1 layout with grey solid border:
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A 3x3 layout with a light pink border and a 1x3 layout with a red border:
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Assembling the units and "filler" pieces required some patience and lots of y-seams, but I actually enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this project. Plus, sewing y-seams is really easy and looks so striking!
I knew pretty much from the beginning that I wanted to quilt this piece using square meandering. It is very time consuming, but I LOVE the effect that it has. Plus I think that it plays up the puzzle theme really well!
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9-Patch Puzzle!
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I really love this quilt, but I was also very excited to give it away. I know it will be well loved by a sweet little girl, and that's the very best compliment a quilter could ever ask for!
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