Cosy Nest for a delicious bubba

A beautiful little baby friend of mine turned one a few weeks ago which provided the perfect opportunity to use a luscious little charm pack that has been waiting in my drawer. A charm pack is a stack of 5x5 inch pre-cut squares from an entire fabric line. I love things like charm packs and layer cakes (10" version) because they are cheap and easy way to get a diversity of fabric and the pre-cuts make them super handy (less fiddly cutting!). I have read that Charm Packs can be used to make lovely bags...maybe one day soon! My charm pack was by Tula Pink and was cuts of her collection Nest.

The birthday girls is called Billie Miro Mystic Merrill and she is a gorgeous little thing whose bright, lively, vivacious attitude to life suited the fabric perfectly. Billie is already a bookworm (following in the footsteps of her poet father and journalist mother) so I decided to make her a quilt from the charm pack that she could curl up under or sit on with a good book ('Where is the green sheep' anyone?).

I only had a week to make this quilt in so I wanted a pattern that was simple (no wonky blocks this time) but I also wanted the quilt to look interesting and quirky. There were 40 squares in my charm pack so I made a 4 nine patch blocks (traditional style).

Then I cut straight down the middle of these blocks, so I found the middle point of each the middle top square and cut directly down. I then had 8 new pieces which I twisted around and laid out on the floor till I had a jumbled but attractive ( I hope) pattern.

This technique took me about 2/12 hours from beginning to end, this included a stop for poached eggs with the boys and various interruptions for a one and a half year old.

I then had four charm squares left over so I decided to cut them each diagonally into triangles and sew different halves together to make different colour squares.

I found a lovely patchwork shop near to my house called Quiltsmith which also happened to be selling the Nest collection half price so bought a few larger pieces of the collection to make borders and used the coloured squares I made to make border posts on each corner.

I also chose this fabric for the backing

In the charm pack, the 5" squares meant that the amazing bird pattern was hidden so I HAD to display it in the quilt somehow :)

I decided the try the 'stitch in the ditch' style of quilting for this project. I have never done it before so I was keen to try and also I love the pattern on the quilt top and I didn't want to have stitches running across them. Stitch in the ditch in when you quilt or stitch in the 'ditch' left from joining the patchwork pieces on the quilt top. The quilting is then effectively hidden in the seam that is already there. I found it surprisingly easy to quilt this way (although my quilting is not always invisible due to my inability to sew in straight lines) and I was super happy with the effect for this project.

All in all this quilt was made across two Saturdays and the binding was happily hand stitched on while catching up on Big Love season 3.

Happy Birthday Bille Miro Mystic Merrill!