I have been thinking of making Emma quilt for about...1.5 years now. After finally finding fabric for the right price I set to work. I hate sewing square after square together. Then I learned about strip quilting....
By far the easiest "piece" quilt I have ever made. I found out about this easy quilting technique when I did a quilt for a church project. Strip quilting changed my life and the possibilities are endless....
First you start with drawing out your quilt. Decide how big you want it and how big you want the squares. Be sure to calculate 1/4" for seam allowance on each side of your cut square. I decided to use 3 different fabrics. I would like to pause and let you know if you are working with a fabric that has words or a definite direction, it does make the planning a bit harder but manageable.
1. Figure out how many square you will get from each strip of fabric. My fabric was 43-44" wide. My cut pieces of fabric were 5". Therefore I could get 8 squares from each strip.
2. I needed 50 squares per fabric so I would need to cut 8 stripes of fabric.
3. Refer to your drawing to see how many "strip runs" of fabric you need to sew together.
4. Now sew the fabric together in strips. You might want to use a tighter stitch because you will be cutting this big thing into small strips
5. I did a couple different sizes of "strip runs" depending on the lay out of the quilt
6. Cut the strips, don't forget you need to add 1/4" for each cut side.
7. Then you just piece them together. You might need to add single pieces here and there to finish a strip. When you have a complete strip row, sew the rows together.
8. This is really easy to do with just 2 fabrics...you can make a baby quilt in a few hours.
9. Make a back with large enough edges to wrap around the sides to the front
9. Cut your batting a little bit bigger than your front. On a side note, I really like to use the natural batting. It given the quilt more of a soft feel.
10. I am a big fan of machine quilting. With that said. Safety pin the bottom of the quilt to your carpet. The pins hold really well when pushed in hard enough and you will need to stretch the back of the quilt to make sure you don't have any weird puckering.
11. Lay the top of the quilt on with the batting on top. Make sure the back of the quilt is upside down, batting then the top, right side up.
12. Stretch the top on and pin down. Use safety pins to secure the back, batting and top to each other. I like to pin about every other square.
13. When the top is all pinned, unfasten you carpet pins and you are ready to machine sew the top and bottom together.
14. I like to run a straight stitch down every other block where the seams come together. This will hold your top and bottom together without having to yard tie it, like old school quilting.
15. Do this horizontally and vertically.
16. Remove the safety pins
17. Fold over the remaining back fabric for the binding on the front and sew around.
18. Enjoy.
