beginner's doll quilt

let's make a beginner's baby doll quilt!

Materials:

12-18" cuts of fabric (if you are following my rotary cutting instructions..this will leave lots of room for beginner's errors or scraps leftover for piecing the backing or pillows) or,
6-10 fat quarters, or odd scraps 5 1/2" squared or larger (blocks will be 5 1/2" squared)
30" square piece of backing fabric
30" square piece of batting, i used warm n natural cotton
couple yards of binding

Tools:

rotary cutter & mat, i use a standard 45mm rotary cutter, and 24"x36" mat
6 x 24" acrylic ruler, any sized square or alternate ruler (for "squaring up")(i use a 12"square ruler)
basic sewing scissors
quilting pins
sewing machine, quilting needle, walking foot and 1/4" foot. *these are not necessary, but make the job a lot easier. i also use the walking foot to apply binding without worrying about the quilt bunching up.

Directions:

1. squaring up the fabric. to start off, we will be cutting out our 5 1/2" squares. to do this, first "square" up your fabric by: matching selvages with folded edge and smoothing out fabric to make sure there are no wrinkles or folds. see picture 1a.

pic. 1a.

after the fabric is folded correctly, and there are no wrinkles or folds (check the bottom fold), carefully take the fabric to the cutting area, where you will clean up the left edge. To clean up the left edge, I use two rulers: with the large square ruler, align the bottom fold of the fabric with the lines on the ruler(pic. 1b), holding it firmly in place, butt the long ruler up against the square ruler (pic.1c). while holding the rectangular ruler in place, gently remove the square ruler and cut a clean edge(pic. 1d).

pic. 1b

detail of step 1b

pic. 1c

pic. 1d

freshly cut edge

2. cutting the blocks. you will now use the freshly cut edge as your straight line for your subsequent cuts. align your rectangular ruler at the 5 1/2" mark with the cut edge (pic. 2a.). cut the 5 1/2" strip. after the strip is cut, "square up the short edge of the strip as we did in steps 1b-1d (pic. 2b). cut 5 1/2" rectangles from the freshly cut edge. do this for every strip of fabric until you have 25 5 1/2' squares (pic. 2c).

pic. 2a

pic. 2b

pic 2c.

3. arrangement. here's the fun part. lay out all your squares in five rows of five in a way that you like.

my "random" arrangement

4. getting ready to sew. next. separate your rows (pic. 4a) so that you can set up a sewing order. to setup your sewing order, starting with the first square in the first row (pink with diamonds) and stack it on top of the next, and then the others until you have the first square (pink with diamonds) on top of the second square (yellow) and so on until you end with the last square (solid pink). do this for each row, and layout square "piles" in a vertical row (pic. 4b).

pic. 4a

pic. 4b

5. sewing the blocks together. now its time to sew. starting with the first row, sew the first square to the second square (pic. 5a) using a 1/4" seam (pic. 5b), press seam to the left (pic. 5c). continue to sew the next square to the previous squares (pic. 5d) (staying with blocks in the same row) using the 1/4" seam, and pressing after each seam to the left. continue until all five squares in row 1 are seamed together. do this for each row until all five rows are sewed together. *note: press the seams in the rows in opposite direction. for example, for row 1 we pressed all seams to the left, in row two we will press to the right, and will alternate directions for each row. this is important as we will see when we sew the rows together.

pic. 5a

pic. 5b

pic. 5c

pic. 5d

all five squares seamed together

all five rows sewed

6. joining the rows. hopefully you pressed the rows in opposite direction, because it will come in handy now, and you will have no problem getting neat corners within your quilt. to start joining the rows, we will first join row 1 & 2, then rows 3 & 4. then we will join row 5 to the bottom of row 4, and then join row 2 and 3. do you follow me? after all the joining you should have one big pieced square.

my separated rows...getting ready to be sewn together

before proceeding i find it helpful to place a marker pin in the first block of every row, with the sharp point pointing up, that way i know the orientation of each row.

how to join the rows:

lay row 1 face down on top of row 2. if you used marking pins they should be "on top of each other" with the points facing in the same direction. to make sure that you are laying the rows correctly, lift up the top row a bit and make sure that it is in keeping with the original layout. do this with rows 3 & 4 also.

my rows grouped together, getting ready to sew

if all things are a go..

before sewing the rows together, carefully nestle the seams together so that the seams line up carefully. *this is where we see the fruit of our labor in pressing good seams to alternating directions. if the seams were pressed correctly, the seams should butt up against each other, seam lines matching, and there won't be extra bulk in any area for us to quilt through. take a look:

this is the way we want our seams to "snuggle" together. don't they look so cozy?

make sure to pin these seams together, because truth be told as cozy as they look together...they need to be forced to stay that way...the machine loves to disrupt nice seams.

nice perfect corners

these are my rows sewed together before it becomes one big piece. i sewed row 1 to 2. then row 3 to 4, and then row 5 to the bottom (along bottom of row 4) of row 3 & 4. next, we will sew the top of row 3 to the bottom of row 2. *remember to press each row after joining it and to continue to line up the seams as we did a few steps ago.

all sewed up!

now that wasn't hard was it?

7. let's quilt! to prepare for quilting, we get our backing fabric ready. it is a good practice to cut your backing fabric and batting 3" wider than the quilt top to allow for "take-up" during quilting. for example, this finished top measures 26" square, so we cut the backing fabric and batting 29".

to get ready to quilt, lay out your backing fabric onto a large surface. if you are working on a carpeted floor like me, you can pin down the backing to the floor so that it stays taunt. if you are working on a table or hard floor surface you can use painter's tape (blue tape) or masking tape to stretch the backing taunt. when i say taunt, i don't mean extremely tight, i just mean make sure there are no wrinkles or folds and that the fabric and batting is relaxed naturally. the tape and/or pins are mainly there to hold the pieces in place while you place the pieced top on top.

lay the backing fabric out on large surface. *make sure that the right side is facing down*

lay the batting directly on top of the backing fabric. *note if your batting is really folded and creased you can take it out of the packaging a lay it flat to "relax" over night.

center the quilt top on top of the two layers

8. basting. to baste the quilt, grab a hand few (or bunch) of safety pins and carefully pin all three layers together. since this is a small quilt i placed a pin every other block or so, with larger quilts, you want to baste a little bit closer. the more the quilt will be bunched up in a sewing machine and tugged around, the more you want to pin it. the idea of the pins are to hold the layers together, and to keep all layers smooth and "in tack." *if you don't plan on quilting your quilt soon, or will be storing it for a while, be sure to use pins that will not rust while the quilt (although, you won't be getting your hard work wet now will you?) awaits its quilting destiny.

pin-basted

9. quilting. with this quilt, i choose a simple "quilt in the ditch" technique which is easiest for a beginner. when quilting "in the ditch" we quilt within the pieced seams. if you use a coordinating thread, it allows for you to get used to quilting and not worry about your lines being perfectly straight. quilt in the ditch of all the squares.

quilting "in the ditch"

10. squaring up the quilt. to prepare your quilt for binding, and finishing up we will "square up" the quilt. before we square up the quilt, cut off all the excess backing and batting as close as possible to the pieced top. be careful not to cut into the pieced top. to square up the quilting, fold the quilt in half lengthwise, and then widthwise to get a "square."

folded quilt square. the left edge and bottom edge is folded, and the top and right edges are "raw" edges

once the quilt is folded, take a large square ruler and trim the raw edges so that they are even. we are not looking to chop off a lot, maybe only an 1/8" or so.

trimming just a slight bit, just to get straight edges.