Me, You, & a Craft or Two: Easy Strip Quilt Part 1 Prep and Cut

I love to quilt. It makes me happy. My mom taught me how to make this particular type of quilt when I was pregnant with my oldest son. It turns out if you can sew straight lines you can make a quilt top :)

I love to be detailed. It makes my learning easier so there will be a total of 5 blog posts for this quilt tutorial. If you don't need the photos it should be a pretty easy thing to learn.

Ok so here's the step by step on how to make an infant quilt.

Here's what you need...

3/4 yard of butterfly pink
3/4 yard of pink
3/4 yard of butterfly purple
3/4 yard of purple
3/4 yard of butterfly green
3/4 yard of yellow
1 1/4 yard of fleece backing
1 1/4 yard of warm and natural batting
2 packages of satin binding
purple thread
complimentary yarn
scissors
rotary blade
cutting mat
ruler
sewing machine
a quilting rack
quilting tacks
a big quilting needle for tying the quilt

The finished product should measure about 41in square.

First things first. FABRIC. I love choosing the fabric for my quilts. I also love when I can get the fabric on sale.

For the quilts I make I choose 3 fabrics with a pattern and 3 solid fabrics that complement the pattern pieces.

This quilt will be butterfly themed. Here's the fabric I chose for the top.

I chose complimentary lavender binding and thread and some fun zig zag fleece backing.

The first thing I do after I purchase the fabric is wash it. It gets all of the dust and what not from how the fabric was shipped to the stores as well as allows it to shrink. I find that if I wash everything besides the binding and the batting it keeps the quilt from shrinking funny and creating bubbles and gathers where there shouldn't be any.

Then I iron the fabric. I match the biased edges to each other by folding the fabric in half longways. It can get rather frustrating trying to get everything straight.

You might have to sacrifice a little fabric to get the edges to line up. By matching the bias you are helping make sure your pieces are cut straight and that when the quilt is washed it remains rather straight.

With this fabric because of the glitter I ironed it right side together to keep the glitter from melting to my iron. (It's a pain to clean off)

Once all of the pieces are ironed it's time to cut. Line up the folded edge along a line on your cutting mat. Make sure that the underneath cut edge is over the line as well. There is nothing more upsetting than having to cut more off the fabric or not noticing your fabric wasn't over enough until after you have cut the strips and there isn't enough left for another strip.

Line your ruler up and cut off the excess fabric. This will create your straight line. Make sure you are cutting with the fold at the bottom and the biased edges at the top. Don't cut off the fold.

For my infant quilts I cut the strips 4 inches wide. Leave your fabric on the mat in the same spot you had it to cut off the raw edges. Just move it over 4 inches and make sure the ruler is straight. Cut your first strip. You will want to cut a little and move your hand up the ruler because they tend to move around and make the cuts really crooked.

I cut 6 strips. Each 4 inches wide. The length isn't important yet. We will deal with that later.

Make sure you cut 6 strips 4 inches wide for all of your fabric choices.

I like to group everything together so that when I sew it is easy to just pick up a pile. For this quilt lets number the fabrics:
Yellow -1, Green butterfly -2, lavender -3, purple butterfly -4, pink -5, pink butterfly -6