Thinking About Making a Quilt as a Gift?

When I looked back in my photos for the quilt I made my niece, Kelly, last year, I remembered this one I made for my former boss:

I thought I'd share it with you because it's really a simple quilt to make with a lot of visual impact, particularly for any guys on your Christmas list. I think the cutting and piecing probably only took me about a day, and then I kept the quilting pretty simple with just some straight lines to fill in the "star" and some meandering in the background. From start to finish, this one only took a few days and I think it turned out nicely--so did my boss and his wife!

The pattern is the Carpenter's Wheel, and I think you can find the block on the Quilters' Cache site. It's made up primarily of half square triangles and a few plain blocks, and I believe I made each block 6". In fact, when you're thinking about simple quilts with lots of visual impact, you might consider just taking a regular block pattern that you like and making each piece much larger, as I did with the Carpenter's Wheel block. Sometimes just one large block can make the whole quilt--or maybe four large blocks set together. The possibilities are endless! All you have to do is think outside the box a little bit!