New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year to all. It's a new year with a new set of goals and new projects I want to work on. I'm doing the One Monthly Goal again this year--for me it was not 100% successful last year, but it was enough of a motivator that I'll do it again this year. Although I did not list the last one, Woodlands, I did finish 11 quilts, so I'm happy.

For the month of January, my goal is to finish this small baby quilt. My chapter is doing a bucket list challenge this year, and I chose a Twister quilt. To see what others are planning for OMG for January, click here!

I've had the smallest size ruler for years but never used it. There are now 6 different Twister rulers from two different companies in a range of sizes--and I now own all of them. For my challenge, my plan is to make one in each size. This is the first, and if this is the only one I finish, I will have still met the challenge.

This will be a baby quilt for a new baby in the family. The blocks finish to 9", and I'm adding two rounds of borders to bring it up to about 36" square. In the upper left corner of the photograph, I have two border squares set in place, 30 more to go. One seam, should be quick.

The process to make a Twister quilt is not difficult or time consuming--it's actually pretty quick. You must have the Twister ruler though: and I have to say, there is a fair amount of waste, which some people will find unacceptable. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, so I made myself a template for the border squares instead of using the Twister method, no waste there.

The packaging for each ruler tells you what size squares to cut for the first step. For this quilt, I needed 5" squares--a charm pack would have worked very well. I happened to have a layer cake, so I took one of each print out of the stack and cut them into quarters, which gave me 4 charm packs, essentially. It'll be fun to see how many quilts I can get out of this one layer cake.

The first step for my block was to sew the required number of squares together and  surrounded with strips of background fabric. Making blocks rather than sewing together rows and rows of squares for a whole quilt, as some patterns call for, is an easier way to learn how to do this, I think. Plus I liked the way the blocks looked and the design flexibility that comes with it.

It is not easy to see, but in the photograph, the ruler has been placed for the first cut in the upper left corner of the block. The lines on the ruler are aligned with the seams you have sewn in the block.

Here, the units have all been cut out from the block, and the scraps around the edges and the middles have been removed. Four squares and a border gave me 9 units.

Next, the units are rotated slightly to form a square.....

.... and then they're sewn together to make one block. I love this!

As these are smaller units, larger scale prints probably wouldn't have worked well. Some of mine were a medium scale, and I think they'll be fine. I also knew the prints with white backgrounds wouldn't have enough contrast with my background fabric, but I elected to use them anyway to use them up. Baby won't mind, lol.