Me, You, & a Craft or Two

Easy Strip Quilt Part 3 Cut and Sew Some More

Here is the final tutorial on how to do the quilt top. There will be two more on how to tie and bind the quilt.

Once you have your panels sewn you will need to iron the seams and then cut the fabric again. Ok so how I do this is I iron two seams on the panel up and then skip a seam and iron the last two up. I skip the middle seam so I can fold the panel in half. Folding the panel in half lengthwise makes it easier to cut. Since all 6 strips are longer than the cutting mat I have I like to just fold it and then cut.

After all of the panels are ironed I start cutting. Once again you will want to line the bottom seam (the middle seam that you did not iron up) up with one of the lines on your mat. I place the mat where the long side is facing me and the short side is going up. This means I can cut more of the strips without having to re-position the fabric.

Line your ruler up and straighten out your edge. Just like you did with the first set of strips.

We are going to cut some more 4 inch strips. From each panel you will want to cut just 4 strips that are the 4 inches wide. If you want a larger quilt you should have enough fabric to cut a few more strips but this quilt I made I only needed 4 from each panel.

After you cut your strips they should look something like this. See the pattern?

Now we SEW! While it might look a little difficult this is one of the easiest parts.

Take two strips from the first set you cut. These will be matching strips.

Lay the strips down right sides together. Make sure the squares do not match each other when you flip one of them over.

Now sew the strips together. Make sure the squares you are sewing don't match. Also, sew the short sides together not the long sides.

Once again, I line everything up with the edge of the foot of my sewing machine and that makes a 1/4 inch seam for me.

By sewing those two strips together you should end up with one long 12 square strip. Repeat this strip for the rest of the strips.

After you sew your small strips to make long strips it's time to sew everything else together. Take one strip from pile one and one from pile two and line them up so no squares are matching. You should have a solid and a pattern on each end. I like to double check and make sure that these are following the pattern I want.

Here is where I pin my fabric. I take the seams and match them up. Make sure everything is right sides together. Making sure the seams are facing the same direction makes sewing easier. It's not a must but something I do to make it easier on me.

After the seams are matched I pin them together. I make sure to go through each layer of fabric.

Pin the whole row this way before sewing. Then line it all up and sew along the long side. You will be happy with the results.

I like to use the same pins throughout the process that way if I am one short I know I have left one in the last row. This prevents me from leaving pins in the quilt top and not catching it. I have found pins in old quilts months after I made them. They are a pain to get out once they are all sewn in.

After you get the first rows sewn you should start seeing the diagonal pattern of the squares.

Even more after the third row is added.

Keep up this process until you have sewn all 6 rows then go back to row one and attach that to the bottom of row 6. You should end up with 12 rows of 12 squares each.

I'm so glad my mom taught me this pattern. It is so much easier than cutting individual squares and trying to get them all even. Now don't get me wrong this is totally a hand made quilt. It is not even close to perfect but it works for me.

I will provide the link here for the tutorial on how to tie the quilt when it's done. If you have any questions on how to make the quilt top please leave a comment and I will try to clarify everything for you! Thanks for reading!

Easy Strip Quilt Part 2 Sew a little

As mentioned in the first tutorial in this one we will cover sewing the first part of the quilt top. The reason I call this a "strip quilt" is because we do everything in strips. The last tutorial we cut all of our fabric in 4 inch strips and grouped them together. Now we get to sew those groupings to make what I call a panel.

When I sew I do about a 1/4 in seam. I follow the edge of the foot of my sewing machine. It is easier for me this way.

Take your first two strips and place them right sides together. I don't pin the fabric at this point but if you need to it wont hurt anything.

Now sew these two pieces together along their long edge.

Next pick up the third strip in the pile and sew it on. Make sure you sew it on the correct side of the first two you sewed together. As seen below the purple butterfly is being sewn on top of the pink solid. It follows the pattern. Sew along the long edge again.

Keep following the pattern of adding strips to the panel until all 6 strips are sewn on.

Remember to sew the new strip on the correct side of the panel so it follows the pattern you are making. If you get it on the wrong side by the time it is caught you may have a lot of thread to take out and a lot more time to be spent on sewing things back together.

When you are done your panels should look like these. Make sure that you have 6 unique panels. For this post we will number these panels and give each color a number too. Below we will have panel 1 (pink butterflies -1, pink -2, purple butterflies -3, lavender -4, green butterflies -5, yellow -6)

Below we have panel 2 (6,1,2,3,4,5)

Below we have panel 3 (5,6,1,2,3,4)

Below we have panel 4 (4,5,6,1,2,3)

Below we have panel 5 (3,4,5,6,1,2)

Below we have panel 6 (2,3,4,5,6,1)

The next step will be covered in the next tutorial here. Then we will be done with the quilt top.

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