Are you craftier than a 5th grader?

M. has been wanting to sew something for a long time now and has bugged and bugged and bugged me about it. Earlier in December she started this quilt with the intention of finishing it in about a week so that she could take it to her school class and show everyone. Well, it took a lot of time--9 days by her account--and a couple of those were with her sewing almost the entire day.

During the Christmas break she got it finished--and she did all the sewing by herself, except for the quilting and binding which I did. The only other things I helped her with were the cutting and some pinning. But she was a trooper and did a great job. Now she is ready to take it to school and show it off.


I have to say that I was a bit skeptical about the CRAZY 9 patch theme. I thought it would be too much--however, I have to say that I really like it. So I guess my point of this post would be even if you think you aren't color savvy or design savvy, you can make a great quilt. If a 5th grader can do it--so can you.

Quilt tag that Aunt Emily said she "had" to have since it was her first quilt.

Here are a few of the blocks that she put together. After 42 blocks she got much better with sewing straight lines. Therefore, some of the beginning blocks are not as straight as the last ones. She didn't care, and it wasn't anything that we couldn't overcome.

Here is the back strip border that we included. The wild print on either side is the same fabric that we used for the binding.

All smiles, and all done!

And good thing too as the next morning after she finished we woke up to a "balmy" -14 degrees.

Details:

Finished size: 64" x 72"

Blocks:

Cut 3" squares--378 total

Sew into mini 9 patch

42 total 9 patch blocks (6 across by 7 down)

Sashing:

Cut 3" strips of white

Borders:

Orange cut 3" strips

Blue swiss dot cut 2 3/4" strips (due to limited amount of fabric we had)

Binding:

2 3/4" strips cut

Sew 3/8" seams

Machine finish