Long Arm Quilting

Monday, April 2, 2012

A strip Quilt Tutorial

 Hey there! How about a happy Monday morning tutorial? If you are anything like me I bet you would love to have a quilt all finished by the end of the week. You may have some jelly rolls laying around the house and have no clue what to do with them, right? Well, this is a really simple and terribly fast quilt.

I found a tutorial on youtube somewhere, but I can't find it again.

 You will need a Jelly roll and the same amount of solid fabric cut into 2.5 inch strips. I used a jelly roll of hand dyes and it was smaller than your typical jelly roll, therefore my quilt is a bit smaller than the other one I made with a Moda Jelly Roll.

Sew your strip together like this.

solid-jelly roll-solid

and

jelly roll-solid-jelly roll

You need the same amount of each pairing - so divvy your fabric up in little stacks that look nice together.

 After your strips of 3 are sew together you will need to sew them into strips of 6. So once again divvy them up into sets. You will sew down both sides of the set to make a tube. I know it sounds wrong, but trust me.

 see, I am sewing  down one side....
 and now I am sewing down the other. Make sure your quarter inch seam is nice and straight.

 OK, so here is the step it gets a bit tricky. The is the most important step so cut carefully. You are going to slice right angle triangles out of the "tube". If you have one of these biggish square rulers use it for this step. You will cut these triangles out of both sides of the "tube". See, that is why you put seams on both side of the tube. You will have an Ahh haa moment when you cut your first and second block.

Go ahead and do that for each tube strip. It goes fast when you get the hang of it. Don't worry.

 You can stand back and admire your little stack of stripey blocks. My what pretty diagonals you have?

 there are several ways to make the blocks come together. Above is squares and below is hourglasses. I did not bother to try to match up the prints, too much work and I think scrappy is easier.


 Trim all your blocks to the same size. Very important that they are all the same size.

 Now, try out some layouts.

 squares

 hourglasses


sew your blocks together.
 I had a couple odd pieces left over, right? So I decided to a fancy narrow boarder. You know how you make the seams to make binding? Well, you can to something similar to make random triangles in your narrow boarder.

 See? it is like making a really WIDE flying goose.....or a small goose in a wide sky.

 Viola! Make the triangles random in the binding and they drive yourself nuts trying to match up the triangles with the triangles on the sides of your quilt top. I finally was able to manage it and it was totally by accident. See the picture at the top, since I did not catch the phenomenon in the shot below.

I also added another more wide boarder to the outside of the quilt to make it big enough to make it worthwhile. Too small quilts are annoying.

OK, let me know if you have any questions. I know this was a pretty slap shot tutorial, but maybe the pictures explain my technique better than my words.

Have a great day!
Tia

4 comments:

  1. thanks for this one Tia - I'm going to a retreat in a couple of weeks and this would be the perfect "don't think to hard" emergency project to have on hand!

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  2. This is GREAT!!! I'm always looking for a good use of those jelly rolls that I always buy, and then stare at not knowing what to do with them!!

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  3. This is SO great! I am going to do this at my next sew day with my guild... I love it! I had to look at it 2x but then I got it!! I also love to see how my sewing bag came in to life. It is gorgeous and every one at my guild meeting last week was Ohhhing and Ahhhing. Thanks!!!

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  4. I like this very much, a few days ago I finished a similar with 7,5 cm wide strips - but only 2 strips in a row

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Thanks for commenting! I read each one. I will either respond via email or here in the comments. xo - Tia