National Quilting Day & Disappearing Nine Patch

This weekend marks the beginning of Spring, as well as National Quilting Day.

The first day of Spring was not very exciting, as we are having cloudy cool days, but with lots of pollen. So all of the parts that we do not like and not any of the perks, so far.

National Quilting Day was Saturday, and I did take the opportunity to work on a project that I began a week or so ago. I was going to post 'in progress', but I was frustrated by the computer file organization in our new Mac Mini. I was successful loading the photos today, so you will see several days of progress condensed herein:

Hideaway Charm squares sewn into six 9-patches. (on my 'design bed') I supplemented with a charm pack of solids and some other hideaway scraps that I had from another project.

I had picked up several charm packs from the lqs some weeks back with a 30% off coupon. I have said before that the price per yard of the pre-cuts of off-putting to me, but with the discount, somehow it made more sense. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with them, though, when I came across a tutorial to put them together as a 'disappearing nine-patch'.

The sub-cut blocks laid out on the bed.

After the 5" charms are sewn together into a nine patch, the resulting 14" blocks are cut down the middle vertically and horizontally, which results in four, 7" blocks. At this point, it would be a very small quilt, about 28"x 42", even though I added the extra fabric to make more 9 patches.

These are the first blocks that I have stitched on my Featherweight and I am still finding my way to a "scant 1/4" seam". When I started cutting the 9 patches, I realized that my blocks had quite a bit of variance in size. So, I added borders...

With chartreuse borders.

Adding borders allowed me to cut them down to a consistent size, however, I did come to realize that my choice of chartreuse, was maybe not the best. In my defense, I did take the blocks with me to the store to choose a color and it looked fine in the artificial lighting of the fabric store and the dim lighting of my sewing area....

In the light of day, I am thinking something else may have been a better choice. So often, I default to a light neutral and I was trying to stretch my color sense...

I am going to add a couple of borders to see if it softens it a bit. I don't think it will be an heirloom quilt, but it has been a useful learning project. I sewed up another charm pack and I think I did much better at gauging the seam allowance with the second group.

This will be my first attempt at machine quilting. At least I don't have to worry about ruining a beautiful quilt with amateurish quilting!