Double Disappearing Nine Patch

Take a look at Christina's blog and see what happens when you do the technique twice!  Here's a sample I've just started stitching up.  This takes a fun, easy technique and transports it to a new level :)

Farewell.

This blog has been nearly all deleted and will no longer be updated. However, I left the items relating to the Disappearing Nine Patch as my blog is so widely known for it's tutorial. Hope you find it helpful.

I Spy DNP Finished

Here is the finished quilt - I'm really pleased with how this one turned out. I 'tweaked' the block sizes a little to get the quilt to finish as close to 40" x 50" as possible, however, I still needed to add a little border to just the sides. I thought it would look more integral to the quilt if I added the hot pink squares into it. Did you notice the border before I told you to look for it?


I did the same quilting on this as I did on the last set of preemie quilts - Patsy Thompson's Loop-d-loop with Aztec Sun variation. One 'sun' in each of the I spy squares. This should be a really easy pattern to get your head around because the initial swirl at the start of the motif is the same direction you finish the motif. But, despite pausing before each motif and deciding which way I needed to stitch to allow myself an escape route, I still got stuck a couple of times!! The overall effect is pretty and I'm sure no-one except me will ever notice :)

Another Disappearing Nine Patch

I'm making great progress on the girly I Spy DNP. Here are the I Spy squares I picked out - all 6.5" square in this case, but the pattern will work with all sizes from 3" to 7". (Smaller than that is probably too fiddly and bigger reduces your pattern variation, unless you're going for a queen size quilt!)




I chose a pale grey 'neutral' for the filler squares and a hot pink for the highlight square in the middle. Here are the blocks coming together - aren't they fun?!

For anyone not familiar with the Disappearing Nine Patch (DNP) I wrote a tutorial a while back on using scrappy 4" squares. Here's a quick recap on how easy it is. You sew a nine patch, you cut it in half horizontally and vertically, you rearrange the pieces to make a new block! Check out my sidebar for link to my original tutorial and lots of variations shown by other bloggers :)

Incubator Quilts using DNP

The Stashbusters group has a 'virtual retreat' this weekend. The theme was to use some of those precut scraps to make something. So I decided to get cracking with a couple of packs of 4" squares I bought on eBay a while ago. I had come up with a pattern using the Disappearing 9 Patch block to make incubator sized quilts (approx 16" X 20") that my local group donates to the local Special Care Baby Unit. I already had 2 in the assembly stage. I had another look at my packs of squares and came up with enough to make a total of 6 little quilts.

I tried to get a nice balance of colours and here are some of them at the design wall stage. I really love how they have turned out. Without the push of the retreat theme I wouldn't have made these little quilts :)

Today, I'm going to a quilt exhibition set up by another local group. Hope to gets lots of inspiration for future projects.

Disappearing 9 Patch Tutorial

The Disappearing 9 Patch block is great. Very easy to make, but looks quite impressive when done! I first discovered it in a book called "Magic Pillows, Hidden Quilts" by Karin Hellaby. I've since seen it on line in various places and using different names. Here's a little tutorial on how to make a scrappy version.

Firstly - select and stitch together 9 squares. For maximum contrast try and get 5 darker prints and 4 lighter prints arranged with the darker prints as the X of the 9 patch.

Square this up, then cut through the block both vertically and horizontally. (My starting squares were 4", so I squared up to 11", then cut to make each new block 5.5".)

Turn blocks to rearrange pattern.

This is my finished incuabtor sized quilt which used 3 of the original 9 patch blocks. Easy peasey!!