Here comes the second part of the Shrinking Squares Scrap Quilt. (
You can find the Quilt Top Tutorial here) There's been two weeks between tutorials so there's no excuse not to have that top finished. Ha! Just kidding, I can think of a thousand reasons to get in between you and the sewing machine, mostly because I have experienced them all this week! Okay, but when you do get your top ready to go the next step is all ready for you to follow along! Aren't I sweet!
Once that top is finished (Really, you made one? Yippee!) it's time to put it all together -- using even more scraps from the top for the back. Here's a peek at my back and top all quilted up, isn't it lovely! (oh and ladies the men like a black quilt, my hubby really likes the dark colors of this one, fyi!) I love the little windows the straight lines make not only around the colorful squares but also in the corners of the sashing.
So to get started let's talk scraps, and direction. I wanted my quilt back to be vertical so I chose two long black skinny pieces to anchor the design and sewed a whole bunch of other scraps together all in a vertical pattern. I cut the black strips to cover about 1/2 of the quilt back...approx 64" long and 12-18" wide.
To start I laid those black strips and a whole bunch a scraps on the table.....
And I cut the scraps down into long strips, like so.....
Then I started sewing the strips together, in the same chain piecing fashion as the top....
More sewing together, and playing with the layout....
Trimming and sewing until a quilt back was coming together....a lot like a puzzle!
And then *bam* I had a finished quilt back....
Yeah! Looks pretty good against the garden fence....
So now you have a quilt back and a quilt top ready to become a quilt sandwich to be sewn together. If you need to know how to make a quilt sandwich refer to my
quilting tutorial for a simple spray basting method. It's the way I prefer to machine quilt. I'm done with all those safety pins!
So set yourself up at the o'l sewing machine.
And get those supplies ready. I like to wind all my bobbins up before hand and put that walking foot on. I used a long stitch to make the quilting stand out more (A 5 stitch length on my sewing machine).
Roll up the end and start in the middle of the quilt on the short side. I find starting on the short side leaves less room for shifting and movement when quilting.
Line up your walking foot with inside of the right side edge of the seam so that there is less than a 1/4" from needle to seam. I used the window in my presser foot as a reference point. Start sewing down the line nice and evenly.
When you finish the row turn the quilt around so that you are on the same side as when you finished but you are now ready to go in the opposite direction. This way the walking foot is still on the inside of right side of the seam....check out the picture....
After both sides have a stitch down them it's time to break out the quilting guide and sew down the middle of the strip. The strip is 2" across....
So you'll want to position the quilting guide 1" from the sewing machine needle.
And then line up the guide with the seam like shown below....Continue sewing the quilt top from side to side and then down the middle for all strips until you get to the ends....
At the ends it's a little tricky, start by switching the guide to the left hand side and then move your needle position to such a place that it is about the same less than 1/4" from the inside of the left seam. Then make two stitches down the ends one at the seam and one in the middle. The third stitch will come when you attach the binding.
Here's a little bit blurry shot of the top once all the strips have three rows of stitches. Looks good, but now it's time to make the little windows and stitch down the long way....
For the length wise quilting there isn't a seam on the end so you will want to use a ruler to line up the walking foot with the seam....Do like we did on the short side: Once down the right side, turn the quilt, another down the right side and then in the middle.
Here's a shot of the guide being lined up for the middle stitch of quilting. Notice I've got the gloves on for quilt wrangling.....
At some point you will run out of bobbin and when you do just pop a new bobbin in and pull up the thread from below and keep on quilting. Also watch out for the spot where you sew over the horizontal quilting lines as this is where puckering can occur, just make sure to go slow and pull taught.
Continue quilting back and forth and then down the middle on all rows until the ends where you do just the same method as the the horizontal stitching and switch the quilting guide...until *another bam* you're all done! Look at those pretty little windows!
Then trim up the sides and make your binding (220" x 2.5") Refer to my
binding tute for details on how to bind your quilt up nice a neat!
Hooray! You've got another quilt done and ready to snuggle with!
Thanks so much for checking out my tute, I hope you like this method of a quilt back and window pane quilting. Shrinking Squares is one of my favorite designs, it's so versatile. It makes a great I-spy quilt and it's also wonderful for mismatched scraps like I used here -- or for one fabric line or just one color for the squares and one color for the sashing....really there are so many possibilities and they'd all look good!
I hope you'll give it a try and let me know what you come up with!
Cheers!
Kelly
