Need a Fast and Easy Quilt?

About November 1 I received a request from the good folks at Road2CA to make a quilt for them using Souvenir Fabric they had printed to celebrate their 25th anniversary. This Show  is January 23-26, 2020, in Ontario, CA. I am teaching four classes there and look forward to that show. It is a very large show, attendance about 45,000, so it's a big show in the western US.

The request came at a busy time so I passed on the opportunity. Four weeks later they asked again so I agreed to help out. I asked for 3 yards of the fabric, having no idea what it looked like and absolutely no idea what I would do with it.

Wednesday December 4 the fabric arrived about noon:

During lunch I looked through my Pinterest boards for inspiration. The quilt had to be fast and easy and had to feature the souvenir fabric.

I found this Super Fast Baby Quilt Tutorial. It is a technique I was familiar with, having done it before with much narrower strips. These instructions are clear and the quilt is 36" x 48"--perfect for a baby quilt or small throw. And you could easily enlarge it, using more fabrics.

Cutting the strips 4.5" allowed the Souvenir fabric to be featured in squares large enough to be a focal point.

Wednesday afternoon I cut out the fabrics and began construction. Thursday morning I finished the top, basted the 3 layers and began a very simple quilting plan:

Matchstick quilting

Friday morning I finished the quilting, trimmed the edges, made the binding, sewed the binding to the back of the quilt, turned the binding to the front and used Elmer's glue to secure the binding to the front of the quilt. This makes it easy to machine stitch the binding in place. 

I used a decorative stitch, a buttonhole stitch, to catch the binding securely. It's a little bit noticeable on the back but almost impossible to see on the front since I used thread that closely matched the binding.

Before lunch Friday the quilt was completely done. Well, except for machine washing to get rid of some glue that got on the binding.  

Ta da! Less than 48 hours from concept to completion:

Since I had 3 yards, the back is one piece of the Souvenir fabric:

Easy peasy! I will remember this one for future baby quilts or "have to be done right now" quilts.

From the original 3 yards I have about one yard left. I cut it into four equal pieces and will use those as door prizes in each of my four classes. 

The matchstick quilting was fast and easy. I wanted the lines "straight-ish"--not perfectly straight. That way I could free-motion quilt it quickly on my Bernina Q20 sit-down longarm.  

If I wanted the lines perfectly straight I would have used a ruler foot and Line Tamer ruler. On  a domestic machine, a walking foot would be your friend for this process:

Here is the quilting plan:

1. Stitch in the Ditch down each vertical row of squares--those first lines are 4" apart. This helps stabilize the quilt--if you used pins for basting, many can be removed now.

2. Stitch a line a little more than an inch from the edge of the block--about one third of the block size. I started at the left, went down the first line, back up the next line, again a little more than an inch from the first line, then down again a little more than an inch from the second line. I continued this process all the way from the left to the right of the quilt. This put 3 lines in each square. No starting and stopping, one continuous line of quilting all the way across the quilt.

3. Again, starting at the left, I "split the difference" between the sewn lines, going down one line, traveling in the outside of the quilt, back up to the top, then down again, each time making the lines about halfway apart between the two lines already sewn. All the way across the quilt.

4. Now the lines are about 1/2" apart so I "split the difference" one last time, all the way across the quilt, from the left to the right, down, up, down, etc.

This is HARD TO EXPLAIN but EASY TO QUILT.  If you try to quilt all those lines about 1/4" apart from the beginning, you will likely get lots of bunching as you go. Doing the lines wider, then closer each time, makes the process fast and the results nice and flat. 

Glad I can check this one "Done" on the list. I will deliver it in January.

Let's quilt.

Barbara