Christmas Cogs Quilt | Amy Friend 

I was the happy recipient of a box of Blitzen fabric strips recently. I wanted to make a quilt that would really show off the line for Basic Grey which meant that I wanted to use only Blitzen for the quilt front. I also had to work with the amount and dimensions of the materials sent.  But isn’t that always the way?  I am forever designing projects based on the amount of fabric I have in a certain color or print.  I had strips of Blitzen that were about 4 ½” inches wide in all but one of the prints (the solid red).

The next step in my designing process involved shuffling all the prints around and grouping them by colors: light aqua, light mint, bright aqua, bright mint, dark green, red, grey, white, etc.  Since I didn’t have enough of any single material to create sashing, I thought I would explore a tessellating pattern.  That’s how I arrived at the traditional Cogwheel block.  I was able to use the full 4 ½” width of the fabrics that I had which allows each print to be showcased nicely.  The quilt size was determined by the fact that I could only cut a few cogwheels out of some of the prints where the strips were more limited. I had to stop when I could no longer get a good distribution of prints.

Because the quilt front is fairly busy, I wanted a calm backing.  I needed to add a print from another collection for the backing material and chose Ruby Dot by Bonnie and Camille.  It is a great coordinate for this collection, also printed by Moda.  The Ruby Dot is aqua with tiny grey dots the size of pinheads.  Since I couldn’t use any of the red on the quilt front, I created a pieced Friendship block with added sashing and cornerstones.  It features strips of the red and other prints from the Blitzen line that worked with both the red and the aqua and grey of the backing.

I decided to quilt simply with straight lines through the centers of each cogwheel.  I didn’t want to quilt in any way that would visually separate pieces of the cogwheel from each other so this was a good solution.

I realized after the fact, that this design will work well with precuts.  For each cogwheel you need one 4 ½” square and four 2 ½” squares.  Those can be cut from two charm squares or from a charm square and a piece of a jelly roll.

I loved working with the line. I can see so many possibilities!  Picture the adorable Christmas stockings!  Oh my – I just may have enough scraps left!

Click here to download the complete project tutorial including supply list, instructions and photos.