Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt Top is Finished

The Disappearing Nine Patch top is done.  I completed sewing on the second border late last night.  Before I show the photos we took this morning, I thought I’d share some quick stats.

As I mentioned in my original post about this quilt, I purchased the fabric quite a while ago with the intention of making it into a quilt.  The fabric was on sale and I bought whatever was left on the bolt of each fabric.

I started out with the following yardage:

Floral:  67” (1 yard, 31 inches)

Orange with Writing:  114” (3 ¼ yards)

Mottled Orange: 76” (2 yards, 4”)

This is all I have left of the floral:

There are 13” left of the orange with writing and 15 ½” left of the mottled orange.  So I used 111” and 63” respectively.

Then once I got the blocks together and laid out, I realized that if I sewed them together like that, the quilt would end up being far too busy for our taste.  That’s when the decision was made to add one inch black sashing in the hopes that would give the eye a break and also create a sort of stained glass effect.

I purchased 1 ½ yards of black Kona Cotton.  I got lucky and it was on sale too.  Of that, I have 1/3 yard left.  I’ll need to watch for another sale to do the binding for the quilt.

And just for fun… this is how much thread I had left at 1 am last night when I sewed the final seam.  (2 ½ spools in total were used)

You can bet I was sweating those last few inches of sewing.

The borders themselves went on fairly quickly.  I did the first border on Monday and then second border yesterday.

The first was a snap to do.  I cut 2 ½” strips of the orange mottled fabric, joined them together on the diagonal and then measured and cut the length I needed.  Then is was a simple matter to sew them on.

The second border however, proved more challenging.  The thought of trying to match up all those lines of words and the words themselves, each and every time I joined a strip of fabric had me very quickly looking for an alternative.

So I decided to add a patch work detail in the center of each border and then again in the corners.   That way, I just needed to cut strips to fit between the corners and the middle.

This is one of the corners:

The center of the second border:

The way I constructed the corner and middle patches will make more sense if you visualize a black binding along the raw edge.

And this is what it looks like complete:

From a different angle:

Finally a close up of the blocks:

Finished size:  68”X96”

The size of this quilt was completely determined by the amount of fabric I had to use.   I had just enough of the floral to cut into ninety-six 5” squares to use in the corners of the nine patch block that then got cut and resewn to make 24 disappearing nine patch blocks.   Then when it came to the patches for the borders; all I had left was an uneven strip of the end fabric that was 3 1/2″ in places all the way down to 3″.  I had just enough to cut four 3 1/2″X3″ and four 3″ squares.

And I had enough of the mottled orange and word fabric left after cutting squares to make a 2″ border and 3″ border.

Now that the quilt top is finished, I’m going to fold it up and put it away for a while until I decide whether I want to tackle quilting such a large quilt on my own or if I need to save my pennies (and dollars) to have it professionally quilted.  The largest project I’ve quilted so far was a baby quilt and it was interesting enough fitting three layers of flannel rolled up under the arm of my machine… I’m not sure I could fit three layers of top, batting and backing of this quilt rolled up under there.  I think I’ll practice by quilting this quilt first since it’s been waiting to be finished for quite some time and then make my decision.

This was a fun quilt to make.  I will definitely be using the Disappearing Nine Patch to make quilts in the future.

But for the rest of the week… it’s back to working on some secret Christmas projects that I started on last week.

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