Babysteps in Quilting

A doll quilt is in progress! A chevron quilt,  and a sewing tutorial to follow 🙂  I’m not good at making choices, which is why most of my patterns come with choices, several versions, because I could not decide on just one. In my head, I’m already planning which other doll quilts I’m making next. I am definitely feeling the doll quilt love.

So I abandoned the half square triangle things. I had to. I’m just not there, yet. Sticking with right angles instead: squares and rectangles. Babysteps.

I love those chevron designs and was thrilled to find this tutorial for a zigzag quilt, by Amanda Jean over on her blog Crazy Mom Quilts, that doesn’t use triangles. Is that cheating? There’s a ton of quilty goodness going on over at Amanda Jean’s blog, I spent a long time there. I had also seen this quilt on Happy Zombie’s blog, so I knew it could be done on a smaller scale.

But one of my new things is: stop looking and go make something. I get so easily distracted by everyone’s craftiness, I sometimes get lost in it and forget to do other stuff  <<– does that ever happen to you?

First, I had to plan it all out.

I needed more visual help with figuring out what size my rectangles and squares should be, so I cut up paper, before cutting my fabric. It also helped me to see  how they would eventually get sewn together.

Then I cut a bunch of rectangles, 2 1/2 inches x 4 1/2 inches–half solid white and the other half an assortment of fabrics from a Dessert Roll I purchased for this quilt. You’ll need 4 rectangles of each color (10 different fabrics-40 in all) and 40 white rectangles.  Each zigzag stripe is made up of 8 squares.

I sewed them together along the long side, pairing a colored fabric to a white. I snapped on my quarter inch presser foot and got busy. I used a short stitch length and chain stitched them–meaning I did not stop and cut my threads after sewing each pair. I kept sewing off the fabric and started sewing another pair, so they were all connected when I was finished, like a bunting. You’ll need 40 – 4 1/2 inch squares total.

I separated them and pressed them. I first set the seams, then pressed the seam allowances open (or to one side).

By the way, have you ever seen this 4-in-1 tool? It has this finger pressing tool on one end which works really well!

I trimmed each piece to be a perfect, well some were not exactly perfect, 4 1/2 inch squares.
Now I can play around with design…

So many different ways it could go. After much thought and wishing I didn’t have to make a choice, I decided and started sewing the rows together.

This part took some time, as I didn’t want to mess up and have to pick out stitches. After sewing all the rows together, I will cut it on the diagonal to achieve zigzag rows, instead of a staircase look.  Here we go…

1.

2.

3.

4. 

Repeat until all rows are sewn. The  number of squares in each row will vary: the top row has 2, the 2nd 4, and so on.

5.

Sew the rows together, matching the seams and design. Here is the finished quilt top, before trimming it. The ruler shows where I will be cutting to make a rectangle quilt top.

This quilt will measure 25 inches long as sewn. Four rows of zigzags would make the quilt 21 inches long.  The width is easy to adjust. This quilt top can have up to 19 1/2 inches in the width.

Now the quilt top is finished– yay me! I’ll press and pin it to my design wall in my sewing room. Now to think about backing fabric and how to quilt the batting and backing to the quilt top.  I’ll share after I’ve done that 🙂 This may take me a while to choose…

I hope you enjoy this sewing tutorial and give it a try! Sharing is caring–share what you make on our Facebook page!  I love looking at all the creative stuff people make.