Step By Step
I have a request to go through the whole quilting process! I am happy to oblige. This will absolutely take more than one blog post so here is the first one of quite a few.
So here is the quilt I started and will walk you through!
Christina has chosen this pattern for a winter quilt design. This particular photo was found on Pinterest of course. So next up is fabric choices!
We decided to do the purples and teals with all these super cute metallic snowflakes on it! Precious! So now we are officially pumped and ready to go.
Now, I do not have a pattern for this specific quilt, but it follows a Log Cabin design like this one which I have made before.
So how do we make this up?? Well, trial and error is a good way to go. I initially tried 4 inch squares for the main bit and 2.5 inch strips for the frames. It became apparent that the strips definitely needed to be skinnier so I sliced off a half an inch. In the picture below, the initial 2.5 inch strips are on the left and the 2 inch strips are on the right. As you can see, I didn't even get to the last layer of fabric with the 2.5 inch strips and it is significantly larger than the completed one with the skinnier strips.
So let's cut!
First I am going to cut a bunch of the light purple squares that go in the top. Now since I am making this pattern up as I go, I don't really know how many of these I will need. My plan is to just cut a few and add to the stack as needed.
So here I have the fabric folded appropriately to cut straight strips that go from selvage to selvage of the fabric. It is lined up with the zero line and any of the horizontal lines just so the strips will be straight. Any lines will do.
Here i have lined up my ruler with lines on the cutting mat. As you can see, it is lined up perfectly to cut a 4 inch strip that will run the width of the fabric.
Now I cut! I now have a 4 inch by 44 inch strip. To turn this into squares, I am just going to rotate the 4 inch strip 90 degrees.
I am leaving it folded in half so that I can cut twice as many squares at once. After slicing off the excess at the left end so that it will line up with the zero line of the mat. Then I will do the same process and cut every 4 inches down the strip.
Now we have a bunch of squares that are exactly 4 inches!
Next we need framing strips. These need to be 2 inches wide. The nice part about this is that we don't need to cut them down to the exact length until we attach them to the squares. I have to just do the same steps as I did for the 4 inch strip but just cut 2 inch strips.
I am going to just need a bunch of these, so after I cut one I am going to just slide the ruler over 2 inches and cut again until I have a good number of strips to start with.
After all of these strips have been cut from all of the framing fabrics then I am done with all my precutting and it is time to sew! Since this post is already crazy long, I am going to stop this one here and start up the next one with the sewing process!
