Gifting Another Wedding Quilt

Yesterday was the bridal shower, so I got to give the bride her wedding quilt. The groom-to-be came over to help pick up gifts, so I made them wrap up in the quilt so I could get a photo.

Here is a photo of the quilt all spread out.

The bride is a fun combination of sports jock, outdoorswoman, hot pink and bling. The groom is definitely the outdoorsy type, loves fishing and camping. I tried to make a quilt that represented both of them, and this is what I came up with.

The quilt caught quite a bit of attention on one of my quilting groups, so let me break it down for anyone interested in making one. I didn't have a pattern, this was just the results of me playing around with EQ7.

It is a two block quilt, which I make a lot of, because you get a lot of secondary designs with two blocks. I had a bunch of leftover 1.5" cut strips from another project, so the pink and white nine patches were my starting point.I didn't have near enough leftover strips to make all these nine patches, it was just my starting point.

 

Sorry for the blurry pic, but I just enlarged a section of another photo to show the block. I'm sure this block has a name, but I don't know what it is. It is like a 54/40 or fight block, but with nine patches instead of four patches. In the wedding quilt, there are 61 of these blocks. Each nine patch unit finishes at 3", so the nine patches can be either sewn out of 1.5" cut squares, or 1.5" strips sewn into stripsets then subcut into 1.5" units. The triangle in a square units also finish at 3", so if you are using a tri-recs ruler, use 3.5" strips. I have the 3" triangle in a square die for my Go cutter, so I just used that. You'll need five nine patches and four triangle in a square units for each of these blocks. 

This is block two, it's just a variation of a churn dash block. I used a nine patch for the center square, and for the corner HST's I matched the outer triangle to the star points in the other block. If you are using an Easy Angle ruler, cut your HST's from 3.5" strips. I used the 3" HST die for my Go cutter. The rail subunits are made with 2" cut strips by either making brown/khaki stripsets and subcutting to 3.5" so they'll finish at 3", or just cutting 2" x 3.5" rectangles and sewing two together, whatever is your preference. There are 60 of these blocks in the wedding quilt. 

Since my blocks finish at nine inches, and I set them 11x11, the center of this quilt is 99x99 inches. The pink inner border finishes at 1", so it's cut at 1.5", and I cut the camo outer border at 6.5". Before quilting the quilt was 113" square, but it lost a few inches after quilting. I quilted it on my Bernina 440, so no, I didn't send it out for quilting, and no, I don't have a longarm. 

The finished quilt has almost exactly 5,000 pieces. The first block has five nine patches 5x9=45, plus four triangle in a square units 4x3=12, 45+12=57 pieces in each block x 61 blocks = 3,477 pieces in block A

Block B has one nine patch=9, four rail units 4x2=8, and four HST's 4x2=8. 9+8+8=25 x 60 blocks =1,500 pieces in block B. 3,477+1,500=4,977 pieces plus borders and backing which were both pieced in this case, so right about 5,000 pieces. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and if I get a lot of questions, I will try to make a tutorial in a couple weeks.