D9P #1 - the green one

On Stashbusters, the 2019 monthly challenge is pre-cuts.  I have decided that I would pick 1 UFO that fit the bill each month and finish it.  Since my goal is 12 UFO's this year, this works well.

January is charms, which are traditionally considered to be the 5 inch nickels.  I knew the exact UFO to pull.  Years ago (less than 12), I inherited a bunch of fabric from my cousin.  I seriously doubled my stash size.  One piece was this luscious purple. 

Then I decided that I wanted to make an oversized king quilt for my bed.  The Disappearing 9 Patch (D9P) was all the rage.  Plus my nickels bin was overflowing.  I had this purple fabric.  So of course a UFO was born.  The purple are the pieces that end up 2 inches square.  Look along the edges of the quilt for the little purple blocks.

Well, since I started this quilt, we got rid of our guest room, as no one used in the first 9 years we lived here.  So we got rid of our king bed because it was worn out, and we took the queen bed from the guest room for our bed.  It was, in fact, our original bed when we got married.  And thus the UFO was not as urgent.

So when this challenge came up, this was the UFO I thought of.  I took it out and assessed the situation.   I ended up with enough parts to make 2.5 cuddle / lap quilts, so it wasn't much more work to make the third quilt. 

Here's the first one.  I call it the green one, because the back is made from green stash.  The second one will be the blue one and the third one will be a mish-mash - leftover backing scraps from 3 or 4 other quilts.

It measures 59 * 59, and busted 5.24 yards of stash.  Its owner has not been revealed to me.

And yes, the other 2 tops are complete and are in the flimsy pile to be sandwiched.

YTD stash busted: 8.96 yards

Baby Cody's Quilt

I read several crafting bloggers and one said her new year's resolution is to post once a week.  So, better late than never, here I go.

Here is the first quilt finish of year.  It was not a UFO - it was done in about a week.

Holly is on my team at work and imagine her surprise to discover that she was expecting her 4th (!) child at 42.  Her other kids are 18, 13 and 11.  So as the fabulous department that we are, we threw her a baby shower.  (With me, there are 10 women - all moms and 1 man - and he has 2 grown children.)

Awhile ago, my MIL gave me some sports fabric because her grandsons are not into sports and she had no idea where she would use it.  I've stashed it for a boy quilt, and when Holly figured out she was having a boy, it was a logical choice.  Holly's older kids have all been in sports and her husband is a coach, so here was the fabric selection for baby Cody's quilt!

When I pulled out all the fabric, they were nearly all 10 layer cake charms.  The other pieces were larger than that.  My favorite, no thought required, quilt is the Double Slice (DS).  My MIL's stash had 28 pieces and so I  only had to find 2 more sports fabrics to get to 30.  I found 3 or 4.

I don't like the cut-sew-cut directions for the DS.  I actually just cut everything into 3.5 x 5 and 6.5 x 5 pieces and sew from there.  (I trim my scraps this way and keep a shoebox for these pieces!) I sewed up all the halves and then stacked them up and sewed all the blocks.  I set it 5 x 6.

The challenge is that there was a lot of fabric with black backgrounds, and I didn't want it all to pool in any one spot on the quilt.  Eventually I got a good layout and got it sewn up.

My go-to quilting is to use a serpentine stitch on every stinking seam (ESS).  It looks like unilock pavers on the back.  I found a bright green Greek key fabric for the back.

I think there are 20 sports represented on this quilt.

It measures 45 x 54 and busted 3.72 yards of stash.

Baby Cody arrived safe and sound and is the 6th man in the family lineup.