Indian Summer Quilt Along–Finishing your Quilt Top

Day One–Cutting Your Fabric

Day Two–Making Your Quilt Block

The first thing we need to do today is to put your blocks together into rows.  Lay out all your blocks as seen above, but this time you will need to add your  7 1/2 by 2 1/2 white pieces that you cut on day 1 (they are your pieces shown on the right in the picture below).

Let’s start with row 1:

Take your first block that is 7 1/2 by 7 1/2 and sew it to your 7 1/2 by 2 1/2 piece as show below.

Press these seams as you did in your blocks on Wednesday.

 Then sew the other side to your pieced block that you did yesterday.

Your two blocks joined with your sashing should look like this.  Trim your row even if necessary.

After you have completed your whole row you are going to add your sashings below each row, which I will show you how to do below.

Below you will see the finished dimensions of your sashings…..but you need to cut your pieces .5 inches bigger to accomodate seam allowances.

Sorry I am going back to diagrams instead of pictures….it was too hard to take a picture of this part.

For the top and bottom sashing you need to piece together so you get a white piece of broadcloth that is 4 1/2 inches by 50 inches (the width of your quilt top).  You will need two of those pieces.

The other sashings will be cut 2 1/2 inches by 50 inches and you will need 6 of those sashings’ pieces.

For the vertical sashing pieces you will need two 4 1/2 inch by 70 inch pieces.  Sew those on as you have all your other border pieces.

One tip, I usually sew only two rows together at a time.  Then I skip a seam and sew the next two together….that way I find my seams are better lined up when I sew the 3 rows of 2 together.

 And you are done with your quilt top!

I promised some good tutorials on quilting and binding.

For quilting—this tutorial and this tutorial are my favorites (or you can mail it to Melissa like I do)

For binding–this tutorial (non-bias binding) and this tutorial (bias binding) are my faves.

How did it go?  Are you addicted yet?  I am….my husband and I looked at our budget over the last couple of months—and my quilting addiction was pretty obvious.  Whoops….now my goal is to use nothing but scraps for some other quilts over the summer (I think I have enough scraps to sink a ship right now….)

Have a great weekend everyone!  We can’t wait to start Skirting the Issue on Monday!  We are so excited to add some new things to the mix 😉

~Elizabeth