Jane's Confetti Quilt: Pockets Full of Posies

Jane here.  I have been looking through some of the amazing quilts that Kirsten has completed, and I got inspired.  One of my favorites is her confetti quilt.  The quilt is constructed by making the back, cutting the batting to fit the back, and making a solid top.  You sandwich those three pieces first, then you cut smaller pieces of fabric to just sew on to the top of the sandwiched layers.  The stitching that you sew around each small piece, is also the stitching that quilts the whole sandwich together.  This is known as "killing two birds with one stone", or "quilt-as-you-go".  

It is just another way to quilt-as-you-go.  The pieces, sewn on top, just have raw edges, and that is okay.  You could just use a bunch of small scraps to stitch on the top, and you would not have to cut any fabric down.  I used some scraps on mine, just the size they were, but I also fussy cut some flowers and some pocket shapes.  I, also, overlapped some of my pieces.  It is the same type of technique as Kirsten's, but they look completely different.  That is one of the great things about quilting.  You can add your own style!  To view Kirsten's confetti quilt, click here.

Jane's January Tutorial

It is January again!  I am Jane, and I am going to show you how to make a "Quilt-As-You-Go" quilt using strips of fabric.  It is a quick and easy quilt.  As I piece the strips together, I will be quilting the quilt at the very same time.  I think this really saves on thread!

The first step in making a quilt, is to decide on numerous things.  You have to stop and think about what fabrics you have, and which ones you want to put into your creation.  I thought I knew which ones I wanted, but after I sewed the first three strips on, I changed my mind and had to do a little more auditioning before I could continue.  Enough about that now.

First, I decided how large I wanted my quilt to be.  Then, I cut out the backing for my quilt.  Yep, you do this first.  Then cut your batting to be just a little bit smaller than the backing.

Place your backing fabric face-down on your work surface.  Place the batting on top of the wrong-side of the backing fabric.  Either pin or use spray basting adhesive to secure the batting to the backing fabric.  I use spray basting adhesive.  Safety pins work just fine.

I know I want to use that amazing multi-colored fabric in this quilt, so I will choose other fabrics to go with it using the colors that are in my top choice fabric. 

Since you know how wide your batting is, you can cut some strips to audition on your laid-out backing/batting.  Just lay the strips on there and rearrange them how you like.  Remember, a quarter of an inch on either side of the strips will be sewed into the seam allowance, so overlap your strips, a little, so you can kind of gauge how many you will need.

This is what I thought I liked, but then I noticed there is no yellow in my top choice fabric.  It has a gold, but no yellow.  I also decided it did not have enough pop in it, so I tried some of the hot pink that is in my top choice fabric.

Hmmmmm.

I rummaged around and found some gold tone fabric and decided some red would give it the pop, along with more strips of my top choice fabric.  Instead of only three strips, I put in five strips of my multi-colored fabric.  The bottom row strip, I decided to piece, using the cut-off ends of some of the other fabric strips.

Time for constructing this amazing creation:

Using a Sharpie marker and your long ruler draw, a line down the side of your batting.  Place it parallel to the left edge, about a half-inch from the edge.  You will line-up all your strips on this line.  If you do not draw a line, you could end up with your strips straggling back and forth, which is okay, if you want to chop a lot of your quilt sides off, when you square it up at the end.  I don't want my quilt to be any smaller than I have already decided on.  Use a Sharpie, because the Friction pen's marks disappear when you press the strips outward.  

Lay all your strips, in order, off to the side of your backing/batting part.  Chose the two strips in center of your layout, because you are starting in the center and working in one direction, then working in the other direction. Shown above are my two center strips.

Line up with the line. Place the one on top of the other, right sides together.  Pin them to secure them, along the lower edge.  Tip:  I have always pinned to make sure the fabrics do not shift as I sew them together.  Yes, I run over my pins, and it has not been a problem.  I was taught to do it that way in school.  See the next photo to see where the seam was sewn.

You sew through both fabric strips, the batting, and the backing, all at once.

Press the lower strip away from the upper strip (the colorful one away from the blue one).  Then lay your next strip on top of the colorful one and sew it down.

Continue placing strips on, sewing them down, and pressing them away from the other strips.

At this point, the last strip on this end has been sewn down and pressed.  Rotate your project around so the marked line is now on the right-hand side as you look at your project.  

This is the half-way finished mark!  Take the next strip and lay it on the one in the center and continue sewing, pressing, and pinning strips on. 

Keep going!

The last strip is sewed on.  Notice it is wider than the others?  I did that on purpose, so it will reach as far as I want it to, then I can trim the excess off.  Now, it gets pressed out, just like the rest.

The top is trimmed off straight.  Square up the other three sides of your quilt.  

I have squared up my quilt.  It has nice straight edges on all four sides.  It is sewn together and is all quilted!

Go ahead and put a seam on the edge of the top and bottom strips, to keep them from flopping about.  This will make it nicer when you put on the binding. 

This is the back of the quilt.  You can see the quilting here.  Because you press each strip over, after you sewed the seams, the quilting is not seen on the front of the quilt.  It is like magic!

Now all you have to do is make some binding strips and sew on the binding, and your quilt is finished.

Ta-Da!

                            Quilt-as-you-go Variations

I made a quilt-as-you-go quilt last July.  I placed all the strips on an angle.  I still started in the center and worked toward the bottom, then worked toward the top to complete it.  I used strips of different widths, that had more than one fabric pieced to make each strip.  I made long strips and sewed them down, then trimmed them off.

I love this quilt.  Click on the photo and it will enlarge, so you can see the details and fabrics better.

My friend, C, made this quilt-as-you-go quilt.  She cut her strips so that they left about four inches on the left and right edges.  She sewed the strips in the middle section, just like I showed you how.  Then she made long strips for each side, made from pieced half-square triangles.  She sewed the side strips on and pressed them out, just the same.  Looking at it, you would never guess it was pieced/quilted the same way.

I hope you learned a lot from this tutorial.  Please, leave me a comment!

Jane's Quilts -With Those American Jane Fabrics

In the last post, Marsha said that Jane was catching up and doing a Civil War Nine Patch quilt.  Well, I had not seen Jane's quilt that she had started last January.  Remember Jane's January Tutorials?  Where are those?  Oh, one was on our float last summer and at the quilt show in October, but nobody posted the photos.  I have connected with Jane and got a couple photos, so you can see how they turned out.  She still has to put the binding on the first one she did; the Sixteen Patch On-Point quilt.

Jane's Rail Fence Quilt

Jane's Vertical Row Quilt; this quilt top was finished in Jan 2019 and

in the Kuna Days Parade and the BBQ Quilt Show.

Session 3, Jane's January Tutorials

Gosh! I am cutting it close.  This third quilt, although made completely of blocks already made, got a little out of control.  Remember those extra 16-patch blocks?  I decided to start with them, in a row down the center.  I may make another quilt with only three in the row down the center.  I used four in this one.  So, get those orphan blocks out! My favorite quilters, Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston call it the "Parts Department".  Go to your Part Dept. and find some of those four patches and whatever else you have and put them up on the design wall with your 16-patch blocks.

Here are my 16-patch blocks on point, on my design wall.  I am making a vertical row quilt.  I have chosen a gray with little red flowers as the background fabric.  I will also be using some left over rail fence blocks, some four-patch blocks, and some of my off-set frames blocks that look like log cabins.  You can use whatever you have that kinda goes with the color scheme of the majority of your blocks.  This quilt may seem to take a little longer, due to you are designing as you go.  I love designing as I go!

Look back at Session 1, to review how to piece these sixteen-patch blocks on point.  I like having a little extra background sticking out, so I can be flexible with my planning.  It turns out four of these on-point is fairly tall, so I will be cutting the top and bottom down a bit. You can see I have plenty underneath the bottom block.

I have put a bunch of blocks, in vertical rows, on the design wall on both sides of my on-point blocks.  I see I will have some not-coming-out-exactly-even rows.  The great thing about this design is it's thirties and forty-ishness.  You can use what I call cheaty blocks to make up the extra length in the rows.  Or you can make a couple of the blocks in the rows, a little taller (longer), but you will have to make fresh blocks to add in for that. 

I have rearranged my rows to see how I like it this way, but it still seams a bit busy.  I think I will cut a couple solid strips of the gray background to break up the busyness.

Okay, I have sewed the blocks in the two rows on the right together.  You can see that they have shrunk up quite a bit.  I think I can add two more to the narrower row and maybe a three-strip section to the bottom of the rail fences row.  I know I will need to do the same on the left side.  I have not sewed them together yet.

I have cut a couple of gray strips to add in, and have rearranged my rows again.  I think this is the most pleasing design. I did sew the cheaty three-strip section on the bottom of the left rail fence row.  Whatever is left hanging off the bottom, I will trim off when I square up the quilt top.

This view shows it all sewed together with the raggedy bottom edge.  Now it is time to square this puppy up!  I laid it on my cutting board and put the top edge on my right.  I squared up the top edge first, then keeping the top lined up straight, I cut the bottom straight.  I did the same to both sides.

Here it is all squared up!  The full view of the finished quilt top.  Kirsten took the photos.  They are a little from the side to get the best light. I think the colors of the fabrics came out well that way.

I am showing off my fabulous new Sixteen Patch Vertical Row Quilt.
It is a little larger than the others, but it will fit better on my big bed!
Thank you for checking out my January tutorials! 

Janes’s January Tutorials: Session 1, Part A

Hi, I’m Jane and I am using strips of fabric to make three totally different quilts.  This is Session 1, where I will cover the preliminaries and how to put together the first quilt. 

First you need to press your fabric and cut strips of equal width from all the fabrics you have chosen to go into the quilt.  Press your sewed-together strips. 

As you can see, I have already sewed several sets of strips together into groups of four.  All the quilts I am going to make will be from four strips sewed together.





Lay your sewed strips on the cutting table and cut them into strips.  The width you want to cut them is the same width you cut your original strips.  Now you will have four square block in each new strip that you cut.   Do not cut your entire piece of sewed strips, so you can have some left for the next projects.

We have our new strips with four blocks in each strip.  Place them on your design wall and mix them up with other strips to get a pleasing variety of fabrics in each group of four strips.  This makes a “sixteen patch” quilt block. 

 

I have made more blocks than I really need for my first quilt, but that is okay, because it allowed me to have plenty of variety in my sixteen patch blocks, and leaves me a few extra for my third quilt.

Before I start sewing these four strips together, I want to make sure that I alternate the pressed seams (on the back), so I can lock those seams together and get crisper looking seam joining on the top.   Let me say it this way:  when you sew two strips together make sure the seam allowances on the back of the one are going one way, while the ones on the back of the other are going the other way.  If you line up the one in the middle first, and pin it, you will see that the others pretty much line up.  This reduces bulk where the seams come together.

I chain pieced my strips together, to save thread and time.  It just seems to go faster when you chain piece.  This is especially true when you are starting to sew together a bunch of sixteen patch blocks.  It may look like a big chore ahead, but it goes much quicker if you 1) get going; and 2) chain piece.

 Press all of your finished blocks and place them on the design wall to view what you have created so far.  You can now feel a great sense of accomplishment, and the most intense part of the projects is complete.

Square up all your sixteen patch blocks with your ruler and rotary cutter.   They all need to be the same size square, so your quilt top will go together with ease.  I have chosen nine blocks to go into my sixteen patch quilt.  The others (I made a lot of extra) will go into the third quilt, so I am sitting them aside for now.

 Now that they are on your design wall, you need to decide if you are making your quilt top with your blocks straight across or on point.  I did my last sixteen patch quilt with the blocks arrange straight across with sashing in between, so this time I am going to do it “on point.”

I have broken Session 1 into two parts, because I want to show you how to sew together “on point” blocks.  That will be next time, so check back later to see the next installment.  Happy quilting!