Quilt Class 101 - Week 5 - Part (A)

Quilt Class 101 - Week 5

Constructing your Quilt Top (Part A)

Most Quilts are made up of fabric blocks sewn together. Sometimes we often look at a quilt and think how did they sew that one together. I like to think of it like a magic trick. On face value you wonder how it was done... But once it is broken down for you..ie a Quilt Pattern, It all of a sudden becomes so simple. You wonder how you didn't see it that way before..

Last weeks lesson I showed you a tip on how we could sew our blocks together. So you should now have a pile of blocks looking like this...

If your struggling on making so many 1/2 Square triangle blocks..

 I do a little technique called Chain Piecing.

When your sewing each block, instead of at the end, Lifting your presser foot, dragging it out and snipping the thread, I sew my blocks continuously. I have a pile of the blocks sitting ready to go. I feed the first one in...then I continue to sew off the edge and I grab the next block. I line it up and feed it under the foot. I don't lift my presser foot, I just continue to feed each block in one after the other. For this particular block, I sewed down the left side of the line on all my blocks. They are all joined by a chain of thread. I then turned all the blocks and sewed again down the left side.. Continuing to feed each block through without lifting my foot.

Once you have them all sewn, in a long chain...

You just snip the chain of thread in between each square.

I find it saves alot of time.. and quick if your doing lots of the same piecing.

Rachael has another chain piecing technique you could follow here. 

Once you have these.. and you iron them all out. Its now time to construct our QC Quilt. With each of my quilts, I like to play around with the designs... just to try out new patterns, layouts.. they can lead to inspiration for future quilts. Here are some of the designs I played around with today.

Here is the Layout for the QC QUILT.

The layout consists of

12 Blocks Per Row...

and 2 Rows for each colour.

Lay out all your blocks.

To Assemble your Quilt.

Start at the top row... Sew your blocks together. Start from the left block and work your way across until they are all joined together in that Row.

Next, Sew each block together in Row 2..

Continue Row by Row until you have all the blocks in each row joined.

Then Start at the top and sew Row 1 and Row 2 Together. Then add each row on until your entire Quilt Top in joined and one piece. Take care to sew an even 1/4" seam. I sew with a regular straight stitch length of 2.4 on my machine.

I will go into more detail tomorrow in piecing your rows together in 

Constructing your Quilt Top Part B...

But if your wanting to get stuck into it.. You may want to re-read Cindy's Tutorial about Pinning..for lining up those seams accurately. You can also read HERE and Amy has a great Tutorial HERE for piecing.

I hope your enjoying Quilt Class 101..If you have missed a few of our classes... You can catch up HERE

 Share your progress or tutorials or even your half square triangle block designs by linking up below..