I have had a fat quarter bundle of Sugar Berry fabric by RJR sitting around for a while now. Multiple project ideas have popped up in my head, and I have changed my mind a few times over what to make. I thought of making a tea cozy, an apron, or maybe a pair of oven mitts. Finally, I decided to use EQ8 quilt software and come up with something I thought would look good. After playing around with different block designs, I settled on the double monkey wrench block and card trick block. I alternated each block throughout the quilt, using 25 blocks in total. After thinking about what to call this, I have decided on the Sugar Berry Quilt. I have made a PDF available at the bottom of this post with the pattern layout, blocks, and yardage amounts.
The Sugar Berry fat quarter bundle I used for this quilt had 21 different fabrics. I chose to cut the fabric into 3.5" squares. After cutting and sewing the quilt blocks, my finished quilt is about 30" by 30". This quilt can be made in a bigger size, simply by cutting the fabric into larger squares. For instance, using 5" squares, and adding a 1" border could make it a quilt approximately 52" by 52". Of course, the other option to make this a bigger quilt would be to add more blocks.
This quilt uses only two different quilt blocks, the card trick block and double monkey wrench block.
The card trick block consists of 13 different fabrics, 3 green, 3 aqua, 3 teal, 3 red, and solid white. This quilt uses 12 card trick blocks. Since each block uses 1/2 square of each colour, you need 6 squares for each coloured fabric. In total, to make 12 card trick blocks, you need 18 green squares, 18 aqua squares, 18 teal squares, and 18 red squares. For the white fabric, there are 36 white squares.
For the double monkey wrench block, I cut 8 different fabrics, 3 white print, 2 dark red, 2 red, and a solid light beige fabric. There are 13 double monkey wrench blocks for this quilt, and each block uses one square of each coloured printed fabric. In total, 39 white print squares, 26 dark red squares, and 26 bright red squares are cut for the double monkey wrench blocks. For the solid corners, I cut 26 light beige squares.
After making all 25 of my quilt blocks, they are laid out. The layout alternates between the double monkey wrench blocks and card trick blocks.
Originally I planned to add a border, but in the end chose no border for this quilt. For the backing, I chose to use grunge basics in cherry.
I tried to make the quilting interesting, while keeping it somewhat simple. The quilting consists of squares which are spaced 1/4" apart, starting along the seams and working inward. Since I have not quilted by hand yet, the quilting was all done by machine, without using quilting rulers. For the thread, I wanted a colour that would blend well with all of the fabric, so I chose a cotton thread in a light beige. When I started the quilting for this project, I had meant to use a bobbin with red thread for the backing, but forgot and used the light beige. By using the light thread, the stitch pattern of the quilting shows up nicely on the back. Unfortunately, the light thread against the red also highlights all the imperfections, and slight wobbliness of some of the lines.
Luckily, I had enough grunge basics fabric leftover, so decided to bind the quilt with it.
Since this quilt wound up a little smaller than I was thinking it would be, I have not decided what I am going to do with it yet. I might add tabs to hang it up. It is too small to be anything more than a baby blanket. I think I might make another one of these quilts, but next time will cut my fabric into bigger squares. It could make a nice bed quilt with the right fabric.