I Spy Quilt Ideas - Part 1 of 3

I'm so glad that we have over 40 swappers on the I spy charm fabric swap that I announced recently.

I have been on the lookout for nice ideas for I spy Quilts for these swappers. They might be nice for you too, if you are in the mood to do an I spy quilt. I have gathered these photos from here and there around the web. I'm sorry, that I didn't think to take credits since I thought they would be a good reference for me and I didn't know I'd be sharing them with you.

Are you a "Quilt as you Go" (QAYG) type of person like me? Why not put 4 charms together to make large 4 patch blocks. Then quilt the blocks before putting them together. I use this method of quilt as you go from Quilters Cache, but there are many others available.


Another quilt as you go style is the simple 9 patch. Here is a 9-patch that uses plain primary colors as alternating patches. Great space for practicing your machine quilting. Use 12 blocks and a QAYG method for quick 45" x 60" kids size quilt.

If you have to make your 120 charms stretch to make 2 or three quilts, you can always do an alternating checkerboard pattern with I spy charms in every other block, and a solid color in the other. Put on a great big border, and you have a fun lap quilt.
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This pattern is a popular pattern, but I haven't seen it used for I spy too often. It's sweet. Quiltville has a pattern called Smokey Mountain Stars. Use charms in every block as shown here or every other block as shown in the pattern.


A free "I Spy a Four Patch" pattern from Quiltville uses 4.5" I spy blocks. This has a secondary pattern that is diagnol rows of light or dark colored small squares.

Check out Bonnie's gallery on webshots for other colors. All are really nice, and can be made for a boy or a girl.


If you have some additional I spy Rectangles of fabric, why not try this fun quilt. A similar pattern to this one can be found at Marys Site. It's called Framed Rectangles. Go here to download.




This is a Disappearing 9-Patch (D9P). The trick here is to put I spy Charms in the 4 corners of your 9 patch block before cutting. Want a tutorial for the D9P block. Check out the tutorial on the Moda Bake Shop here.

Snowballs - click here to see a method of making snowball I spy blocks. Since we're collecting 5" charm squares, you might consider adding smaller snowball corners rather than the larger ones that this link calls for.

Hexagons. This looks like a complicated quilt, but with the right tools, it's easy.

Here are various Hexagon I spy quilts made with various background colors. The secondary pattern of course is a star. Do you see it?

Some of the red blocks with red points are easiest to see. On this first hexagon quilt, look closely at the inner border, some of the I Spy items are named.

This little guy's PJ's makes him dissappear right into his quilt, wouldn't you say? What's good to note in this quilt, is the exquisite pieced borders and how they play right into the colors of the middle of the quilt.

And last but not least, this hexagon quilt is accented in black. Using a light colored thread, I like the idea of quilt writing some of the names of items to look for on the dark border.

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Go to Part 2 of "I Spy" inspiration.