White Nights is Published!

Thank you McCall's for publishing my White Nights quilt! This, my friends, is my favorite quilt.  When I decided to build our king size bed, I knew I had no quilts big enough, so off I went to EQ.  I wanted something bold and had several ideas floating around in my head. I used the Easy Draw block method to design one block. 

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 Yes, just one block.  A unique block with an odd size of 9".  I wanted to make a black and white nine patch where four blocks meet. If you read about my Sassy Sister quilt, then you will see a resemblance to this block.  This is actually the first one I designed, Sassy Sister was a re-design with fewer pieces.

 This block does have lots of tiny pieces. I wouldn't call it easy just because of all those little 1" strips.

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If you are like me, you love quick and easy, but every once in a while I want to make something a little more difficult or complex.  I love a quilt that has some dark and light fabrics to contrast with the medium values.  I chose Amy Butler's Dreamweaver fabric line in fat quarters for the color.  Lots of bold, modern prints, that went great with the black and white.

I started by cutting all the pieces for one block (except the black and white) from each fat quarter. Then I put all the same sized pieces together.  If I remember correctly, I was able to cut about four blocks worth from each fat quarter.

All those pieces! I strip pieced some of the black and white units, but there were still lots to lay out.

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 It took about 30 minutes to make one block at first.  As I got more used to making them, my time improved a little.

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 I was very pleased with how it turned out.

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 I quilted it with the Marmalade pantograph.

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 As you can see, I also made a wall hanging to go over our tub, and a table runner from some other Amy Butler scraps I had. If you are interested in the king size bed, I made it too.  Click on this link to read about that project.

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Before I close, I do want to tell you about the name.  White Nights is the name for the phenomena that occurs in St. Petersburg, Russia, usually from around June 11th to July 2nd. During this time the sun doesn't drop below the horizon.  It is a fascinating time to be there with lots of activities going on during this natural event. Several years ago I had the opportunity to travel there on business and take my teenage son.  When I designed this one, it reminded me of that time. The bright colors of the day, offset by the white and black to represent the white nights phenomena. Even though it never gets dark then, night time is still for sleeping snuggled up with a homemade quilt. Hope you've enjoyed seeing more of my White Nights quilt.

If you'd like to be entered for a free March/April 2017 issue of McCall's Quilting, along with a mixed bag of scraps to get you started on your own White Nights quilt, leave me a comment.  I've included some charm squares from Bonnie and Camille's great happy-go-lucky fabric line. Contest for residents of the contiguous United States only. Contest ends February 18th.

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Rachel