I hope no one’s been waiting too long for this! Thanks to Morgan, I (finally!) created a downloadable PDF for you which shows the chart I used to create my Ruby Strings quilt (or ‘Ruby’s All Strung Out’, as I’ve been referring to it lately…memorable, but maybe not the best blog title!)

Download: Ruby Strings Chart

For this quilt, I used 11″ square blocks – 6 blocks by 7 blocks, which results in a quilt that measures about 63.5″ x 74″– a generous throw. I used Bonnie and Camille’s lovely Ruby fabrics, and by my estimates, you’ll need about 40 fat eighths (I had a 40 FQ bundle, and have about half left over). I’d guess that you’d also need around 4 yards of solid white (or your solid of choice).

These blocks use the same technique as described in my String Block tutorial, so I’m not going to recreate that here for you. Just check over here for the instructions for creating string blocks.

Each block starts with a 1″ strip of white (or your solid of choice) running diagonally through the block. Then you can refer to the PDF chart for the width of the print and solid for each block. (Please note that you will always start with a printed fabric on either side of the diagonal 1″ white strip). Continue adding prints and solids of the called for width until you’ve covered one side of the block.

Unlike the scrappy version of the string quilt, the goal with this quilt design is to get the strips to line up. This can be kind of a challenge, especially with those really narrow strips! Tips? Make sure your 1″ white strip is centered diagonally through the block, be sure to maintain the same seam allowance throughout, and be sure to iron (or finger press) each strip well (and consistently!). That being said, I wouldn’t worry too much if things are a bit off – there are many strings in my quilt which aren’t perfectly aligned, but I don’t think anyone would notice!

I hope you’ll find this chart helpful! I found it useful to cross off each block on the chart as I made them, so I’d know which blocks I still needed to make. If you make a similar quilt, be sure to add it to my Flickr group – I’d love to see it! And as always, feel free to ask any questions here. I’ll answer in the comments!

Just a quick little project, but oh so satisfying!!

I used Jeni’s wonderful tutorial for these lined drawstring bags. The first was so quick and easy to put together that I decided I certainly needed two. I’m using them to keep my new knitting projects contained. I haven’t started either project yet, but one will be for a winter hat for Max, and the other will be a honey cowl for myself.

I can’t really call myself a knitter, but I do get the urge every winter. This year I think I’m going to make it my goal to make something more than just a straight scarf! And to that end, a couple of us have started a little Flickr group, Purl and Patchwork, for those who love sewing and knitting. Hopefully it will provide the inspiration (and help!) I need to make my goal a reality! We’d love to have you join if you’re so inclined…

Anyway, even though I have yet to actually start any knitting, I’m feeling quite ready with my cute little drawstring knitting bags!

Ok, finally! Look what I have for you… a quick little tutorial on how to construct the scrappy triangle blocks I used in my Nautical quilt.

A few things before we start… this tutorial will show you my method for making a scrappy triangle block. I’m not providing fabric requirements, or instructions for fully completing this quilt, because well, I just don’t have time! and because I think there are many great tutorials already out there for finishing quilts. If you have questions about the block, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them there. Feel free to use and share this tutorial, but please remember to give credit!

Block size: 6 1/2″ x 9″.

So, to start, you’ll want to make yourself a template for an isosceles triangle. You could really select any lengths you want, but here I’m going with a triangle that measures 6″ on the short side and 9″ on the two equal sides. (I marked lines on the left side to show the 6″ short side, then marked a vertical line 8.5″ away from the left side and a horizontal line at the halfway point of the short side. Use the point where those lines cross as the point of your triangle.)

Once you have your template cut out, you can start sewing together your scraps. I sewed most of mine together the following way because I think it results in less waste.

I find that 5-6 strips seem to work best for this size of triangle. You could use more if you wanted, but you should make sure that your first and last strips are wide enough so that you don’t lose the fabric in your seam allowance. Lay out your strips, overlapping them a bit to account for the seam allowance, to make a basic triangular shape.

Lay your template on top to make sure the scrap area is large enough.

Sew your strips together using a 1/4″ seam allowance and iron. I iron my seams open, but feel free to use your preferred method! Trim, using your template as a guide.

Cut a piece of your background fabric that measures approximately 6″ x 12″.

Align the long side of the background fabric with one of the long sides of the triangle. You’ll want to align it so that there is about 1.5″ of background fabric on either end of the long side of the triangle.

Sew along that edge and press. It’ll look something like this.

Align the short edge of the triangle with one of the vertical lines on your cutting mat and then make a horizontal cut through your background fabric approximately 1.25″ above the top of the short edge, as shown above (this doesn’t need to be exact, as we’ll be trimming it down later on).

You’ll have something that looks like this.

Take the background piece you just cut off and flip it around like so.

Flip it up so the right sides are together and sew along this long edge, again leaving about 1.5″ of the background fabric on either end of the triangle.

Trim off any excess beyond the seam

Press this seam. You’ll have something that looks like this.

Trim the top and bottom sides so the height measures 6.5″. I aim for about 1/2″ of background fabric above and below the short edge of the scrappy triangle. Trim the sides so the block measures 9″ in length.

And ta da! One scrappy triangle block! Make a whole bunch more, arrange them how you’d like, and sew them together into a lovely quilt top! As always, if you make any, I’d love to see them, so be sure to add them to the FITF Flickr group!

I’m really excited to have finished up this quilt! As I may have mentioned last time, this is the first quilt I’ve made that’s made up entirely of solids. And I wonder now why I waited so long!

This quilt got its start many, many months ago. At that time, I had just finished my Flying Farfalle quilt, and wanted to make a second similar quilt. Instead of using white for the main solid, I went with Kona Coal and paired it with lots of Kona scraps. To make the colors pop, I outlined them with a tiny bit of white.

I intended to lay it out the same way as the Flying Farfalle quilt, but then Morgan started playing with the layout while it was up on the design wall and turned it into this instead. I love the imperfect little colored diamonds (or kites!) it creates.

I kept the backing pretty simple, using lots more Kona Coal, along with just a couple tiny strips of colored solids. I knew I wanted to use a dark gray thread for quilting, and I don’t love the look of a dark thread on lighter colored fabrics, so I figured I’d keep the backing mostly gray to avoid that.

It took a while to decide how to quilt it – again, mainly because I wanted to avoid the look of the dark thread going through the white and lighter colored fabrics. Finally I came up with this big zig zag quilting pattern which goes through each block, but avoids the colored diamonds. I did a double line zig zag horizonally through the quilt, and I love how it looks.

And yes, Max now has yet another new quilt! I realize this is really thinking in advance (and I’m sure there will be many other quilts before this), but I think this might make a great quilt when he moves to a toddler bed. But for now, we’ll use it as another playmat!

Lately I’ve been quilting most of my quilts, especially the smaller ones, with straight line quilting. I love random straight line quilting, like on this quilt, and I’m also quite fond of diagonal quilting, especially with double or triple quilting lines for a little something extra.

I’ve wanted to try something new though, so I was happy when I thought of this little variation (inspired in part by the quilting on this mini quilt by Kate).

I love how these quilting lines intersect in the middle to form one large diamond, along with several little diamonds along the midpoint.

Want to try out this pattern? Here’s what you’ll need:

• A quilt ready for quilting (probably easier to do this on a smaller quilt!)
• Washable marker (I use Mark B Gone, which I buy at Joann’s)
• Walking foot (not required, but certainly helpful when quilting straight lines)
• Edge guide, if you have one

(click any image to see it larger if you’d like!)

So here’s my pretend quilt. To start, measure along the long sides of your quilt and use a washable marker to mark the centerpoint of each long side (note: make sure you’ve squared up your quilt so the long sides are equal in length – otherwise this design won’t work out so well). Draw a line across the middle of the quilt, connecting the two points.

Starting from one upper corner, draw a diagonal line from the upper corner to the opposite centerpoint marking. Repeat for each corner, and you should end up with marked lines that look like the ones above.

Stitch along one of your marked lines, creating a sideways ‘V’. Now decide how far apart you’d like your quilting lines. If you have an edge guide for your machine, set the guide at your desired distance. (For the manly baby quilt, I used a distance of 1 1/4″, but this is really up to you.) Use the guide to follow your first stitch line, keeping the needle down when you reach the marked horizontal centerpoint line you drew earlier, and pivoting to continue stitching to the opposite corner. Continue until you’ve filled in this section, as shown in the image above.

[Note: if you don't have an edge guide, you could instead decide what distance you'd like between your quilting lines, draw them on with a washable marker and stitch along those lines.]

Repeat for the opposite side of the quilt.

You can see how your lines will intersect along the horizontal centerpoint line to create a row of little diamonds (shown in this photo in the solid gray section).

The final part is to fill in the top and bottom triangular sections that are left without any quilting. I opted to echo the triangular shape, using quilting lines that were the same distance apart as in the middle section of the quilt. On the manly baby quilt I left an empty space of 3″ and then started these quilting lines.

I think this is a fun variation on diagonal quilting, and I hope you do too! If there are any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer there.

I’ve made many strip quilts in the past and I’m often asked for a pattern. I don’t really think that a pattern is necessary – one of the things I really like about strip quilts is how you can change up the look by altering your strips and fabric placement – so this little tutorial is more about my method, rather than precise instructions. But hopefully it will provide a start for those of you who may be interested in making this type of quilt. (I apologize in advance for my excessively wordy post!)

To begin, I typically select a stack of printed fabrics I want to use for my quilt. Then I usually add in several coordinating solids. I find that I typically use about 7-12 printed fabrics, along with 2-6 solids, depending on the size of the strip quilt. I like variety in my strip quilts, and this provides enough fabric to use 1-2 strips of each fabric.

Next you’ll want to cut these fabrics into several strips, cutting selvage to selvage. To start, I usually cut 1 strip of each fabric – 2 of those I’m particularly fond of. I try to vary my strip widths – cutting widths from about 1 1/4″ to about 6″. I usually select a couple of my favorite fabrics to use as feature fabrics, and I cut the wider strips from those fabrics. As you can see in yesterday’s Strawberry Seas strip quilt, I cut wider strips of the mermaid and octopus prints because I wanted those to be a focus. In this quilt, I cut wider strips of the FMF seeds and dotted leaves prints.

[I tend to use narrower width strips of the darkest color, since I don't want it to be what you focus on - in this quilt, I've used smaller strips of the dark brown solid (in yesterday's quilt I used narrow strips of the darkest orange).]

Now you’ll start to lay out the strips to find a layout you like. I usually start with the wider strips, leaving space between each wide strip. Then I fill in with the remaining strips. Once you’ve laid them out, you may find that you need to cut a couple additional strips. I try to vary the placement of the fabrics and the colors, so often there’s a lot of rearranging of the strips until I find a layout I like. At that point I typically take a photo to make sure I still like the layout – it’s often easier to see the layout as a whole in a photo.

I stack the strips in a pile from top to bottom, and then I sew them together in pairs – sewing the first two strips together, setting those aside and then sewing the next two strips together. Repeat until all pairs have been sewn together, keeping your strips in the order you’ve set. You’ll likely find that your strips aren’t exactly the same length, especially if you’ve mixed in several different fabrics, and that’s ok. They’ll be trimmed up in one of the next steps.

Now you’ll want to repeat this process, sewing the first set of pairs to the second set. You’ll now have sections of fabric strips that each contain 4 strips. At this point I iron all the seams in each section. (I wait to iron until this point because I’m not a fan of ironing, and I find this method to be faster, but of course you could certainly iron after sewing the pairs together).

[I sew the strips together in pairs and then sections like this because I find that there's less distortion of the fabrics. It's been my experience that this method keeps the strips straighter and truer.]

Now you’ll trim each of these sections. I find the section with the shortest strip to determine the length you’ll cut each section to. For this particular quilt, I found that my shortest length was about 42.25″.

Cut the selvages off one side, and then cut the other side at your determined length – 42.25″ in this case.

Once all the sections have been trimmed to the same length, pin the first section to the second and sew. Repeat for remaining sections. Then sew each larger section to the next section until they’re all sewn together. Iron these seams and then stand back to admire your quilt top!

Tips:

• Since you’re cutting your strips from selvage to selvage, the maximum width of your quilt will be somewhere around 42″ or so (assuming you’re using 42/44″ width quilting cotton). With a quilt of this width, I like a length of around 55″ or so (but of course this is all personal preference!).

• Smaller is nice too (as in the Flea Market Fancy baby strip quilt I showed the other day). You can trim your strip sections to a shorter length and use the trimmings for a pieced backing.

• When you initially lay out your strips, it can be hard to determine if you have enough strips to make a long enough quilt. Once you have your strip sections sewn into 4-strip sections, I like to lay out all the sections again and measure the quilt length, taking into account the seam allowances. If you find it to be too short, you could add in a strip or two to get to your desired quilt length.

• I like to use a medium/large width strip for the top and bottom. This way if you need to trim up the quilt once it’s all sewn together, you’ll have enough space to be able to trim without ending up too close to the seam.

Any questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll respond there!

Anyway, here’s a can of the 505 – it comes in two sizes, but I much prefer the larger size. I buy mine locally, though I’m sure you could find it online as well. I like how well it sticks, and I’ve never had a problem with it gunking up my sewing machine. (I’ve only used this brand, so I can’t comment on how other brands of spray adhesive work.)

My only concern with the good old 505 spray is in what you’re breathing in. I’m quite certain that it’s not good for you, since the recommendation on the can is to make sure you use it outdoors or in a well ventilated space. Being that I’m in Vermont, that’s not really possible most of the time, so I wear this heavy duty mask. Cute, right? (of course, since getting pregnant, the job of spray basting has fallen to Morgan, which I don’t mind at all!)

So, to start… I spray my quilts on the floor in our guest bedroom. I don’t particularly care about the carpet, so I lay out the batting directly on the carpet and I don’t worry about any overspray (though I’ve never noticed the surrounding carpet to ever be sticky). If you’re doing this on nice flooring, you may want to first lay out an old sheet. Lay out a piece of batting that’s slightly larger than your quilt top, smoothing out any wrinkles. (doing this directly on the carpet works well for me, since the batting tends to stick to the carpet and remains nice and taut).

Lay out your quilt top on the batting. At this point I trim the batting if it’s significantly larger than the quilt top. I like to leave an extra 1-2 inches of batting all around the quilt top.

• Pull back about half of your quilt top.
• Spray the 505 spray directly on the batting, starting at that midway point (a little goes a long way!). I like to spray a section about a foot in width at a time.
• Smooth your quilt top back over that section of batting that you just sprayed. I start from the middle, working my way out, making sure I’m pulling it taut (but not tight – you don’t want to distort the quilt top).
• Repeat this process until you reach the top of the quilt. Then repeat for the other half of the quilt, pulling back the other half of the quilt top until you reach the sprayed section.

At this point, if you have a backing that’s just one piece, you can go ahead and flip the batting and quilt top over and lay out your backing on the batting. Repeat the spray process to adhere your backing to the batting, completing your quilt sandwich.

However, I often have a pieced backing, and therefore need to make sure it lines up correctly with the front. Morgan came up with this method, and I think it works really well. On the front side, he clips the batting so he knows where the outer edges are located. This way when you flip your batting over, you can easily see where your quilt top is positioned.

Flip the batting and attached quilt top over, and lay out your batting, lining up any pieced sections with your clip marks.

The backing for this particular quilt has a pieced section along the bottom edge, so you can see that he also clipped the batting to show where the seam line was. This is where the pieced section of the backing will line up.

Once again, fold back half the quilt backing and spray in sections, starting in the middle and moving to the top. Repeat for the other half of the quilt. And now you’re ready to quilt your quilt! (I’ve found that this spray adhesive remains sticky for quite a while, so no worries if you don’t immediately get to the quilting stage. The spray adhesive then washes away with your first wash.)

I hope this helps! Feel free to leave any questions in the comments and I’ll reply there.

I started this one at the end of 2010, and wrote up a tutorial on how to make these blocks. I even got Morgan to sandwich it and then somehow it got stacked in a pile of finished quilts and I forgot all about it. Then when browsing the FITF flickr group the other day I saw a couple other lovely quilt tops made using my tutorial, and I realized I needed to get this one done!

I quilted this one with straight lines, running both vertically and horizontally alongside the sashing. I went with double lines on every other row and column to give it a bit more interest.

It’s bound with a bright spring green solid, which I think really complements all the blues and purples of the Innocent Crush fabrics.

The backing is one of my favorite prints from this line, along with a bit of patchwork detail at the top and bottom. It measures about 40″ x 55″ and makes a great lap quilt or a cute crib sized quilt! It’s listed in the shop!

Have you seen photos of Melody Miller’s upcoming line, Ruby Star Rising? It’s gorgeous, and printed on a great linen/cotton blend, which I think is perfect for all kinds of projects. Lately I’ve been liking this weight for market bags.

So when Melody Miller generously sent me a few of the prints from her new line (thank you, thank you, thank you!), my thoughts immediately turned to a new market bag. One can never have too many, really.

I decided to use this fabulous viewmaster print — I didn’t have quite enough to make the entire bag out of this print, so I paired it with a great Echino chocolate brown solid, also in a linen/cotton blend. I used my standard market bag tutorial, but upped the size, and then gave it a bit of an L.L. Bean tote bag look, with a solid colored bottom and extending the straps along the outside of the bag.

The inside is lined in a great aqua solid, complete with a generously sized pocket. And may I just say how much I love it? I love looking at Melody Miller’s fun print, and of course I’m always excited to have a new bag to add to the rotation!

This great new fabric line should be available soon. I don’t know a date – does anyone out there have an idea? I do know that I’ll be stocking up though!

First, a quick drawing showing the measurements (for those of you who want to skip the rest of the tutorial!) -

This block is a great one for using fat quarters, and I think it works best with non-directional prints, since the blocks end up turned in many different directions when you put together the quilt top. For my Innocent Crush quilt, I used fat quarters of 11 different prints (all the prints from the Charmed palette).

To start, square up the long edge of one of your fat quarters and cut a strip 3.25″ wide. You’ll want to cut this strip along the long side of the fat quarter, which means you’ll have a length of approximately 22″. Cut a strip of solid white (or your solid of choice) that’s 1.5″ wide and the same length as your printed strip (in this case, about 22″).

Sew the white strip to the long side of the printed fabric and iron.

Cut this strip into 7″ pieces. You’ll get 3 pieces from each strip.

Repeat with your other printed fabrics. Additionally, cut a second strip from each printed fabric that’s also 3.25″ wide (3.25″ x 22″). Subcut into 3.25″ squares. While you’re at it, cut additional strips of white fabric 1.5″ wide by 3.25″ in length.

Select two printed squares and sew together with a white strip separating them. Iron seams.

Sew this section to your rectangular section and iron your seam. Your block will measure 7″ square.

Make as many additional blocks as you’d like for your desired quilt size and lay them out to your liking, alternating the block orientation to create your desired design. Add sashing between the blocks and admire your lovely new quilt top! (sashing between my blocks measures 1.5″ in width)

As always, let me know if you have any questions, and if you make a quilt or quilt blocks from this tutorial, please consider adding your photos to the FITF Flickr group!