Henry's Quilt

This is my Henry.  I have the best grandchildren in the world.  (Sorry, it's just true.)  Henry is posing here on his quilt, which I made in early December.  He's also posing with the "Ugly Doll" his mom made.  (Isn't she clever?  I also have the best children in the world.)
I pieced the blocks for Henry's quilt at a retreat with the Mad City Quilters in Madison.  I needed a simple project, because for some reason I get distracted when sewing with others and tend to make a lot of mistakes.  Henry needed a new quilt for his bigger bed.
He is a very special kid, very smart and interested in all sorts of things.  He loves robots and sea creatures and dinosaurs and bugs and just about any animals.  I picked out all kinds of fabulous novelty prints for the quilt.

Isn't this fun? There are so many wonderful novelty prints in the stores!
 The pattern for the quilt has several names.  It's often called Stretched Stars.  I made it in a larger size than I've ever seen published, just because some of these were large prints and I thought they'd be more fun if you could see more of the print.  I had to experiment with it a little to see what size the white triangles should be.  I didn't want to have any seams to match other than the edges of the blocks.

Here's a full picture of the finished quilt.  The green and blue borders are printed with robots.  (You can see one of the robot decals on Henry's wall.  He's a big fan of robots.)  I bound it with the green robot print, too.
If you'd like to make one of these, here's the recipe:
Cut 80 7.5 in. squares from novelty prints, to make 80 blocks.
Cut 160 white 3.5 in. squares.
Sew the small white squares to the corners of the novelty print squares.  You can draw a line across the white squares and sew on it.  Or, you can do like I do and simply press the squares in half diagonally, crease them with the iron, open them up, and sew on the fold line.  I hate drawing lines.  My way is a little less precise, but it doesn't really matter for this quilt.
Once you have the white squares sewn across the diagonal onto the novelty print squares, you trim away the extra, by putting the ruler on the seam line and rotary cutting a quarter of an inch away.  You'll be left with 2 triangles, one white and one novelty print, already right sides together. 
[You could set these aside for another project.  I used them as leaders and enders, sewing the white and novelty print triangles together.  Then I pressed them, and trimmed them to 2.5 in. square.  Later, I made them into the Pinwheel quilt for charity already mentioned on this blog.  See below.]
I set the blocks 8 across and 10 down, side by side.  The first border is cut 3.5 in., and the second border is cut 5.5 in.  When finished, the quilt should measure 72 in. x 96 in.
I quilted it on my Davis Vertical Feed treadle.  I just quilted diagonal lines across the squares and into the borders.
This is a nice easy quilt to make for charity.  If making a smaller quilt, I would make the blocks smaller, say 5.5 in. for the novelty prints and 2.5 in. for the white squares.
Happy Quilting!

(This is the Pinwheel quilt I made with the leftover triangles, some dinosaur print, and some leftover robot blue print.)