Over this holiday weekend, I’ve been trying to finish up some quilts that I’ve had laying around. Quilts take up a surprising amount of space when they haven’t been finished. Extra fabric hanging off. Not really folded. All sorts of mess. I have a few that are just waiting for binding. Most of these right now are “practice” quilts. I either had them lying around or I made them because I wanted to practice my longarm quilting.
One such quilt is this crazy 9 path quilt. I started it years ago. Literally years ago. I can’t even remember. It’s been sitting in my UFO pile for so long. Definitely at least 4 years. Anyhow, finally got off my butt and finished it.
The first step was to finish the 9 patch squares. I had finished 9 of them previously and had cut the squares for the other 9 (there are 18 total). Originally this was going to be 2 baby quilts, but then I decided to turn it into one big quilt because I didn’t know who I would give the baby quilts to and I was more likely to use a big quilt.
Crazy 9 patch is pretty simple to do. You just chop the squares all together in some random diagonal lines. It’s important to cut all 9 squares together so that they all have the same shapes.
Then lay them out, one after another, starting with a different square each time so that you end up with one of each color in each square.
And stitch them together. I do columns and then rows. The one thing I don’t like about crazy 9 patch, is that I can never seem to get the points to line up. It has to do with the math and angles. It will never line up, not without weird stretching. I know this. But it still annoys me.
Once all the squares were done, I laid them out in a pleasing fashion, mostly trying not to get too many like colors next to one another. Simple black sashing completed the top.
Next up was quilting which I do at Always Quilting (or visit their blog). I decided to do a geometric quilting pattern to contrast with the craziness of the 9 patch. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I used some mottled charcoal colored wide back fabric that they had at the store along with Hobbes batting which I also got from the store.
Here’s how it looked when it was all finished, but before washing (after washing is at the top — you can see it got more crinkly). This also has the binding which was that last step. I used a striped yellow fabric. Love me some stripes for binding.
I used the method where I sewed it to the front, then wrapped it around the back and top stitched it on the front so that it caught the binding on the back.
I’m happy with how it looks on the front, but not thrilled with the back. This led me to go searching for other binding methods. So on the next few quilts, I will try those. I know, I know — hand sewing is the “proper” way. But that’s just not my way. I will do the hand sewing thing once in a while for quilts that call for it.
However, I’m still quite happy with how this turned out overall!
