Bounce or Hubble? Bounce AND Hubble!

If you remember, our Another Year of Schnibbles "assignment" for October was that we could choose to do either Bounce or Hubble.  Back a week or two ago, I shared that I was making Bounce for my neice, Alex.  At the time I was also planning to do Hubble, because Alex now has a step-sister, Vivian, who is also 7, but I wasn't sure if I would get it finished in time, but I did!

Since I was making both girls a quilt, I decided to use the same line of fabric for both--Good Morning by Me and My Sister.  I love the fun, bright fabrics that aren't too juvenile.  I think they will enjoy them for some time.  The variety of colors is nice, too.  Alex is moving away from the "pink and purple" phase, but those are still Vivian's favorites, and this line had all of the favorite colors. 

The scale of the fabrics also had an impact.  I already wrote a bit about the choices that were available in making bounce, and the fact that I used one large square for the center of the blocks, instead of piecing 4 patches.

 

 

 

I was happy that the larger-scaled patterns got a chance to show up instead of getting chopped up smaller as would be required for the 4-patches. 

 

I followed the same idea for Hubble.  The pattern shows making lots and lots of half-square triangles.

 

 

But again, Carrie has options.  At the end of the instructions, she said that one could just make the star shape from squares.  I liked that idea because it was quicker (I was making two bed-sized quilts after all) and also the fabrics could be showcased again, and not chopped up.

 

 

 

I spent one whole afternoon trimming the charm squares and laying them out in the star shape.

 

It actually took longer to lay out the star, ensuring that nothing too similar was too chose together, than it did to sew the squares into the star!

 



 

 

Because I was making both quilts larger, and rectangular, instead of square, as the pattern instructed, changes had to be made to both.

 

Bounce was fairly easy to modify--I just made more blocks to get it close to my desired size--80x88--and also adjusted the border width.

 

 

72 blocks make up this version of Bounce.  The background is a light blue solid.  I increased the amount of background that I thought I would need, but I had to go back to the store two more times to finally have enough!

 

 

Hubble was a bit more challenging to adjust.  Carrie had three sizes we could do, by trimming the charm squares to different sizes, and so I chose the largest.  That still only gave me a larger star square.  I needed a rectangle.  I considered several options:  adding two more rows of squares to the star to elongate the star, to add rows of charm squares to the top and bottom edge of the entire quilt, or to just add more background fabric above and below the star.  The latter was the option I chose, and I'm very happy with it.

 

 

I love how the narrow border frames everything just perfect!  Hubble was the project that I needed to finish last week before I could tackle my class quilt.  The narrow inner border was also the border that my iron scorched!  Luckily, it is scrappy-pieced, and I had plenty of strips, so I just ripped off the scorched pieces, and added on more.  I really would have been unhappy if the wide, outer border had been scorched!  That would have been a disaster.  

 

I'm really pleased that the same line of fabric produced two such different quilts, but they still "relate" to each other.

 

Both quilts are now off to the long-armer to hopefully get quilted in time for Christmas! 

 

Have a great day!

JoAnne