Scrappy Stripes

I finally braved the -20 c (-4f) temps this morning to photograph yesterdays finish, my ears and hands nearly froze off but I love the stark white background for bright quilts :)



The back was even scrappy



So how did I make this you ask?
I have always loved the idea of this QAYG method since watching this video tutorial about a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ji8BLS2rNHA

This is a cushion cover I am making with the leftover strips, so I'll show you how I did it:

Layer together a piece of backing fabric, a layer of batting and a starting piece of fabric. You can either start with triangles in the corner or a strip down the middle


Place the next strip on top of the starter piece (right sides together) and stitch in place 1/4 inch from one edge sewing through all layers



Iron those pieces back.


And sew on another strip. My strips were applied randomly, however I did try not to repeat a fabric in the same block. My strips ranged from 3/4 inch wide to 2.5 inches wide, but the majority of the strips were 2 inches or 1 inch wide.


You will notice I am doing multiple blocks at once which allows me to chain piece the blocks and minimizes how often I have to walk to the ironing board!


Once you have covered the square trim it to size. For my 12 inch blocks in the quilt, I cut 12.5 inch batting and backing so that they could be neatly trimmed at this point to perfect 12 inch squares.



The sashing is cut into 1 inch strips and two inch strips


The two inch strips are folded in half and ironed



Block 1 then has a one inch strip attached to the back of the block (right sides together) at the same time you are stitching the 2 inch piece of sashing to the top NOTE: this is the raw edge side of the 2 inch strip that we are stitching down.


It should look like this


Attach it to block 2 with the right side of the 1 inch strip attaching to the backing side of block 2


Stitch it in place, this is a little tight so you need to hold back the other seam to allow space for your presser foot as you go. Then it will look like this:


Fold over the two inch strip to cover the join


Topstitch it down


Repeat the process to make rows


Then use the same process with long strips of sashing to join the rows. Make sure you line up the sashing between the blocks.


This is a cushion cover so the backing isn't very interesting because it'll be inside the cushion, but you can probably see the white half inch wide sashing between the blocks:


On the front you will have 3/4 inch wide sashing strips with some topstitching visible but when done in the same color as the sahing it is barely visible and doesn't detract from the attractiveness of the blocks


You can see with this quilt I made 30 blocks each was 12 inches square, I then made six rows of five:


The sashing on the backing is more visible in this photo, you can also see the effect the quilting created; a diamond pattern is visible due to the layout of my blocks:


This scrap quilt was made purely as a practice quilt to try this method, now I am going to use it to complete this herringbone quilt top with black sashing: