March Easy Way to Sew a Block Quilt Top

March has been kind of a crazy month for me. I've just been in a slumpy mood so it's been extra difficult to stay motivated to be honest. And this month's projects are reflective of that because I didn't do just one or two things. I did a bunch of random things. So forgive the randomness and I will get focused for April.

One of the things I wanted to do this month was tailor a few shirts I had that were too big or too small. I want to put instructions on how to do that but I need to refine the process a little bit. I hadn't done it before either but they turned out ok. I realized I had a bunch of  scrap material around the house too because I was looking for some material to enlarge a tank top I was working on. So I gathered all my scraps into this HUGE bag, and the sewing fever got to me. One of the first posts of this particular blog, I posted instruction on how to make a messenger bag. It featured a really vibrant material that I had also used previously when making a small curtain for my living room window. I only bought a few yards but had a lot of extra material left over, and since it's a sturdy material I didn't want to just throw the scraps away. I decided I wanted to start a quilt but I also wanted to give you an easy way to sew a block quilt.

When I was a missionary in Las Vegas, my companion Sister Wooters, and I went to the Humanitarian center once a week to do service.  At first we started helping out with smaller projects but we both became intrigued by the ladies making the quilt tops. We asked if we could make them, and one awesome lady volunteered to teach us. They had certain size requirements, and they already had the material matched and packaged together. I ended up completing about 3-4 but I only have pictures of two. Here I am!

 

This one was my favorite. I picked out the fabric myself, and it was my last one so I had improved significantly at this point.

 

This was my first one. I really liked the colors and patterns. Very bright! I was so proud of this!

 

This was my more artistic one haha I picked out the patterns for this one. It was fun to match up these random patterns to make something look cool

The church requires specific sizes for the quilts, and the humanitarian center already had the squares pre-cut a lot of the time so that's why these quilts are made with rectangles as opposed to the squares in my picture examples but the technique is the same. We also didn't have to complete one quilt. Sister Wooters and I would just sew the tops, and the other volunteers would finish the quilts with the batting and tying etc. This tutorial will only show you how to make the tops. You can send in the tops or drop them off at an LDS humanitarian center, and they will have volunteers finish the quilts for you, and send them off.

If you want to donate or help out with quilts or other services, click on this link for more info: https://www.lds.org/topics/humanitarian-service/center/quilt-guidelines?lang=eng

I'm going to share with you the technique that the lady at the center shared with us. I tried to Google search it to refresh my memory but it doesn't look like anyone else follows the same steps. So it took me a few times to remember the steps.

This is perfect for you if you are just starting out or if you're looking for a simpler/faster way to sew your quilt tops. I had some sewing experience prior to this. I had helped my Grammy make my prom dress in high school, and I had sewn a lot of sleeveless outfits for my Barbie's when I was younger. You don't need a lot of experience in doing this except know how to use a sewing machine. And that's not hard because the instruction manuals are very helpful or there are plenty of YouTube videos out there for you to watch.

I would highly recommend that you purchase some of these materials first if you don't already have them:

The materials include a rotary cutter, a cutting mat, and a large ruler. I found these on Amazon but you can purchase them at any fabric or craft store. This is way better than just plain scissors. I have not purchased them myself yet so in this tutorial you'll see some crazy edges which I do apologize for. The above materials will help ensure that all the squares you cut will be uniform. It's also a much quicker process especially when you have to cut lots of squares.

Once you have all your squares cut, lay out your pattern. Take a piece of paper or sticky note, and write the #1 on it. Pin it to the bottom square on the far left row. You don't have to draw the arrows unless you need help remembering which way the numbers go but I figure since most people read from left to right then arrows aren't needed. Follow the same steps for the rest of the rows.

Take the bottom square on the first row, and flip it over so that it's on top of the square right above it (right sides will be together.) Keeping the bottom edges aligned, fold over the top half of the 1st square. Pinch the ends together with your fingers as shown in the picture (you'll have the two edges from the 1st square and the one edge from the 2nd square).

 

Keeping the edges pinched, flip the 1st and 2nd square over so that it's lying on top of the 3rd square. The 1st square should still be folded in half and at the top of the third square. The 2nd square should be aligned with the bottom edge of the 3rd square. You're going to keep the 1st and 2nd square pinched together but fold over, going down the 2nd square. Pinch together the folded ends at the bottom. When you do this, it will look like the picture below.

You're going to keep doing this all the way to the end of the row.

At the end, pin the paper with the row number on it through all the pieces. If you have a lot of fabric and the pin isn't long enough to go through the whole stack, use a rubber band or something to keep the stack together without it unfolding. Once you've got the stack secured, pin the paper to the stack so you remember which row it is. Do this with the remaining rows.

The good thing about this is you can come back a week later and pick up right where you left off because everything is already organized. For the next part, you're going to sew the squares together individually to create one row. To do this, sit at your sewing machine, and unpin the note from the first row. Make sure to keep the stack together as much as possible. Take the 1st and 2nd squares from the stack and sew them together, with right sides facing each other. You will always sew the bottom edges together.

 

 

Take the 2nd square and the 3rd square and sew the bottom edges together. Repeat this until the end of the row. Pin the paper with the number on it to the bottom square on that row.

Repeat for the other remaining rows. It should look like this:

Again, you can fold these up and come back to them at a later day if needed because they're already labeled. When you're ready to start up, lay them back out. It might seem silly to lay them out since they're labeled but as I was doing this, I realized I had sewn some squares together incorrectly on one of the rows so I was able to fix it before getting more into the process. Laying the rows out helps you to (hopefully) notice any mistakes so that you can fix them before proceeding.

You're going to take the last row, and fold it on top of the row before it with right sides facing each other. Technically you could start from the 1st and 2nd rows but I took the pictures starting from the back. It really doesn't matter which end you start at. Then take the next two rows and fold them on top of each other in the same fashion and so forth.

 Sew the right edges together for each pair of rows. If you started from left to right then you need to sew the left edges together. Lay everything out again in numerical order. You're going to keep laying rows on top of each other as before and sewing the right or left sides together. Once you've got all the rows sewn together, then you've got a completed quilt top!

I added some longer pieces on the edges to make it bigger because it wasn't very big. I could add to it if I wanted with other scrap materials or just leave it small.

I'm probably going to make this into a baby blanket for my first niece or donate it to the Church after I finish it. But like I said, this is a really great process for keeping everything organized. We were usually able to finish a quilt top within a week or less because we could only volunteer for about an hour. The longest part of this is picking the material, cutting, and figuring out your pattern. Once you get everything pinned, the sewing part goes really fast. I really hope you find this useful!