U.R.N.H. (with general instructions)…

At last all of my Market quilts have made their way home, which means photographs have been taken and I can show off all of the Savanna Bop goodness… Yay!!!

In case you haven’t read my post on the rationale behind Savanna Bop just pop over here to read all about the importance of Pink Rhinos

You also may be wondering what U.R.N.H. means, which would be a reasonable thing to wonder at this point. Well, it is the name (with help from the fabulous Betz White if memory serves) of Bee’s most special quilt. I’ve told the story elsewhere, but I love it so much I think it bears repeating…

You see, about a week ago Bee and I were holding hands while walking to the coffee shop down the street. Abruptly, she stopped and pointed at the shadow we cast upon the sidewalk and proclaimed rather excitedly, “We are an H, Papa!!!”

Not only do I love that she has started using shadows to form letters (she also likes making Ms with Mama, Papa, and her), but I simply adore the way she phrased it. We didn’t make an H, we are an H. Hence, this quilt. It is us.

So here it is, at last, in decent pictures…

thomas-knauer-sews-urnh-1

thomas-knauer-sews-urnh-2

Could Bee be any more adorable???

Now, I’ve had a bunch of requests for a pattern or tutorial for this quilt, so I’m going to do a little mini-tute for it. It’s just going to be mini because I’ve realized two things…

1] I really don’t like writing patterns. I think I’ll be going with a technical editor from now on. It’s not that I can’t do it; I just really don’t enjoy it…

2] This quilt is really, really easy. Much more than a few words of advice really would be overkill…

So, here it goes. First is the handy-dandy digital mock-up of U.R.N.H. It shows where I put everything, though I wouldn’t worry to much about making it exactly like I did. It is really quite flexible.

thomas-knauer-sews-h-quilt

Now my version is 64″ x 80″, which I think is a nice size for Bee’s first big-girl bed (coming soon). So the long arms of the Hs finish at 4″ x 12″ (cut to 4.5″ x 12.5″) and the cross parts of the Hs finish to 4″ squares (cut to 4.5″ squares). At the top and bottom of columns you will occasionally need to truncate a long arm on an H to finish at 8″ x 4″ (cut to 8.5″ x 4.5″).

For mine I started with half-yard cuts of 18 of the Savanna Bop prints. I used the Giraffes, Rhinos, Elephants, Sun Spots, Faerie Lights, and Mosaic. You can get away with 15 half-yards, but I wanted the extra variety and am always happy to have extra bits to piece into backs or to make a spare baby quilt (especially with Savanna Bop).

Actually I started with half-yards of the entire collection and used big pieces of the feature print along with some solids for the back…

To actaully piece the quilt, just piece the columns as they are in the diagram. You really can just scatter the prints wherever, as long as the Hs all line up with each other correctly. You can do this with as few or as many different prints as you want. At some point I am going to make another for Bee in which each H is a unique print.

To make it bigger, just add more Hs. If you want to make it smaller you can just stop your columns sooner and do fewer columns. Or, you can shrink the size of the elements: i.e. long arms that finish to 9″ x 3″, cross arms that finish to 3″ squares and truncated arms that finish to 6″ x 3″.

Anyway, since the quilt is just pieced rectangles and squares done in columns it is pretty darn bullet proof. After piecing each column I placed it on my bed, then did the layout of the next column right next to it so I made sure things would go in the right order.

I think that about sums up the how-to. I hope it all makes sense. It really is a fun quilt to make, especially in Savanna Bop (if I must say so myself). I think the collection works just wonderfully to make quilts that are great for either girls or boys, and boys need more pink in their lives just as girls deserve more blue.

Yay colors!!!

-T

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