Tuesday, October 5, 2010

a quilt tutorial


I thought id finally give you the tutorial on how I make my very unconventional quilts! Heres what youll end up with if you want to quilt along with me. I just have the quilt top to show you at this stage as ive run this up today so I can post it in four parts over the Blogtoberfest.
Do you want to try and make one with me?
 You could wait until the weekend to start if you like. Next monday ill post the second instalment and then consecutive mondays thereafter.


All youll need to get going this week is to do some random squares as ive done here. Mine is roughly 30cm by 30cm. Or perhaps just do one to start with.  They dont even need to match in size or colour too much, but obviously they need to not clash horrendously. So when you have your one random square, it can be any size you end up with, choose about a metre to a metre and a half of a base fabric that you LOVE (you pretty much need to love it if youre going to use it on a quilt as youll be staring at it for years). Ive gone with this classic aqua brocade which was a leftover from some curtains.
Here we go.

step 1.

Place your patchworked square on the corner edge of your chosen base fabric and slice a strip from selvedge to selvedge across the fabric the same width.


Trim any unruly pieces from your square as you go along and save these off-cuts.

Step 2.

Place right-sides together and sew along the short edge adding your square to the end of the strip.


Trim again now and save your off-cut for placing in randomly. If you dont have any off-cuts grab a piece of fabric that you love the look of with your base fabric and cut a sliver (any size wide) of it the same length of the slice you cut into the strip. It could be a fat quarter, a craft print, a piece of silk, a piece of hem you just cut from the summer dress you just shortened or whats left of your sons favourite pyjamas that he has grown out of.
 Again.
 You must love it and it must 'go'.
Skip to step 4 if you dont have any off-cuts. I always have off-cuts though.

step 3.

Join any off-cuts together if they are wide enough to sew together without being 'eaten' by the machine. Mine are about 2 centimetres wide.

step 4.

Slice through the base fabric at random or roughly in half like I have. It doesnt matter where at this point.

step 5.

If you dont want, or like the look of, a thin piece of fabric here you can add a piece of another favourite
 fabric to the side of your off-cuts. Some fabrics look nice sliced thinly and others look 'lost'. Stitch it in the centre of the slice.

step 6.

Stand back and admire your handiwork. You have a week to 'find' the rest of what you want to add to your masterpiece. Get busy making some more patches if you can.
They can be simply three fabrics joined in strips or complex, but remember this is meant to be fun.

Happy sewing!


P.S. Next instalment here.

3 comments:

The Moerks said...

Great tutorial. I look forward to seeing how the quilt progresses.

dorothybills..... said...

Very inspiring, will join along soon...must wait till market sewing is done for me!

Tracey@bountifully said...

Now I was just thinking about my next quilt and pondering if I would do something a bit like one of your quilts, when I wondered over here and found you had this little tutorial going on. Weird. So, it is like a craft omen, I shall quilt along with you, and lets see how it goes!

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