Girls' Quilts

I made Rebekah & Erika these quilts for Christmas. A friend asked me how I made them, so I put together a little explanation (not so little... I got a bit carried away) and thought I'd share it here. I also have pdfs of the instructions, templates & cutting layouts that's I'd be happy to share with others, but I can't figure out how to attach the pdfs in blogger.

Quilt Instructional

½” seam allowance

material assumed to be 43” wide

all material amounts are to make two quilts

8 ½ yards double-sided fusible web

3 yards dark pink (optional additional 1/8 yard for backing)

3 yards dark purple (optional additional 1/8 yard for backing)

1 ¾ yards yellow

½ yard orange

1 1/8 yards green

1 1/8 yards teal

3 yards light pink (squares; optional additional 4 ½ yards for backing)

3 yards light purple (squares; optional additional 4 ½ yards for backing)

Thread in dark pink, dark purple, yellow, orange, green & teal

Batting (I bought 1 king size and cut it in half to make 2 quilts. It’s cheaper that way. You could also buy twin sized)

large circles – 9”diameter

medium circles – 6”diameter

small circles & flower centers – 3”diameter

I drew the quilts to be identical, but in actuality, I made some thing opposite: the quilt border & grid are reversed (purple border, pink grid on one; pink border, purple grid on the other) and the squares are reversed (flowers on pink, circles on purple on one quilt, flowers on purple, circles on pink on the other). I did this so that the quilts had subtle differences, but still looked the same at a glance.

For the backing, I used the light pink & light purple materials that for the squares. I used 4 pieces with the grid material between. It ended up being a little short, so I had to piece them together. It was kind of a pain. If you want to use material for the back, you’ll need an extra 4 ½ yards per quilt. Another option would be to buy a twin flat sheet and use that as the backing. If I had to do it over, that’s what I’d do.

Trace the circles & flower pieces on the material. I just used a pen as I find those material pencils annoying. After all are traced, iron on the fusible web to the back of the entire area of tracing. Cut out shapes. Iron on large circles & outer flower petals onto squares. Zigzag stitch around outside edge. Iron medium circles & inner flower petals on (note: make sure that the inner petals are in the right spot so that the inner circle covers the inner edge of each petal). Zigzag stitch around outside edge. Iron on small circles. Zigzag stitch around outside edge.

The flowers are the same for the whole quilt. There are 2 color combinations of flowers: large green flower with dark purple petals & orange middles; and large blue flowers with pink petals & yellow middles. If I had to do it over again, I’d pick a different material for the yellow or buy some backing, as it’s a little too transparent to hide the petals below. Just something to watch out for.

The offset circles are the same for each circle… so the large circle is centered, the medium circle is centered vertically and 1” from the right edge of the large circle horizontally. I alternated the position of the small circles. Some are 1” from the top of the circle, some are 1” from the bottom of the circle vertically and are centered horizontally. I was very picky to make sure that I didn’t repeat any color combinations (so there’s only 1 per quilt that is green, pink & yellow in any order), and rotated the squares to make them “random”. I hope that makes sense. I wanted them to appear uniformly random.

After making all of the squares, I began sewing them together with the grid. I did entire rows

(square/grid/square/grid/square/grid/square)

then when all of the rows were done, I sewed them together

(row/grid/row/grid/row/grid/row/grid/row/grid/row)

then sewed the long grid piece along the edge of the whole quilt.

I pieced the border together to make long enough strips, then sewed that around the outside.

Binding: I highly recommend a 1” bias tape maker for this process. Or you can put a large needle through your ironing board to kind of guide the folding process to make all that ironing easier. Better instructions on that process here.

Layer the quilt, batting & backing together and sew together with the binding. I usually safety pin it together in a few pieces to keep it together while moving it. Edge stitch the binding on around the entire quilt.

Tying: you certainly could quilt the quilt, but I’m not good at that at all. If you quilt it, I think it’s recommended that you quilt before binding. I just used yarn and a large needle to put a stitch in each grid intersection. I put the needle from the top of the quilt through to the back, moved over ¼”, pushed the needle back through to the top and tied a not. Cut the yarn to about 1” long.