Cozy Hound’s Tooth Winter Quilt

I’ve been wanting to make a hound’s tooth quilt for a while now.  I tried making one as a baby blanket, but chose the wrong fabrics and it didn’t go well.  The trick to making this pattern work is extreme contrast in fabrics.  I had chosen a hot pink solid and a multi colored paisley for the baby blanket.  After all the little pieces went together they just blobbed into one pink paisley.  So after a few months of doing other stuff, like moving across an ocean, I tried again.  This time I went for white with subtle snowflakes and red.  Perfect for Christmas.  For the back I chose gray fleece with a polar bear print.  I LOVE polar bears and with a polar bear print it takes the quilt from being a Christmas quilt to being an all round winter quilt.

I had debated between the gray with polar bears fleece and a gray with white trees fleece.  The lady at the fabric store advised me to go with polar bears.  At least that’s what I think she was saying.  I don’t know, it was all Korean to me.  It didn’t really take much convincing because as I just said, I LOVE polar bears!

I used the instructions found here: http://awonderfulthought.com/houndstooth-quilt-pattern/ .  She has all the right numbers and measurements, which I don’t always find in on-line instructions.  If this looks like something you want to take on, head on over to A Wonderful Thought.  I’ll just show you how mine went together.

First, the red and white was cut into strips and sewn together.

Then those strips were cut into triangles.

So…Many…Triangles!  356 of them to be exact.

As I was working on cutting the triangles Little Bit got out supplies to make a Thanksgiving turkey.  I mentioned to her how much I too enjoyed making holiday crafts when I was a little girl.  Then I paused, looked down at what I was doing and chuckled when I realized that I still do.

Next came attaching the triangles together to make squares, then attaching those to the solid squares.

The next steps are just taking small chunks and putting them together to make bigger chunks.  After a while the pieces needed to be moved to the expansiveness of the floor to keep them in their proper positions.

Everything was going well until Hazel June needed a word with me.  She seemed rather displeased with the whole “Hound’s Tooth” thing going on.  I tried to convince her that when the pattern is turned upwards it looks like birds.  Well, birds with ears.  Okay, bats, they look like bats.  She didn’t seem to be swayed and just kept glaring.  Maybe it had nothing to do with the pattern and she seemed displeased because she is a cat and that’s what they do.

Once the top was put together I pinned all the layers together.  I was very nervous using fleece for the backing because it stretches so easily.  I made sure to put in a lot of pins to keep everything in place.

All that was left was the machine quilting (just stitch in the ditch) and to bind the edges with more red.  Speaking of binding the edges, I had a little surprise.  As I was hand stitching the binding to the back I felt something hard inside the layers.  I somehow managed to get a safety pin under the quilt top and it sat there quietly as I quilted everything together.  I had to cut a little bit of the stitching and fished it out.  Thankfully, it was on an edge so it came out easily and there is no damage to the quilt.

I ended up having no trouble with the fleece.  It laid perfectly flat and in place.

While this quilt does get dragged from spot to spot for some great cuddle time, it’s official spot is on the back of the couch snuggled in with winter pillows.

See that polar bear pillow.  I made that with instructions from here: http://www.bugaboocity.com/polar-bear-pillow/.  My pillow form was bigger so I couldn’t use her measurements, but it turned out cute anyways. Little Bit took some of my scraps and made a baby bear pillow that sits on my bed.

With the addition of the quilt and pillow my home is all the more ready for a long cold winter.  Come on Snow!