Quartered Stripes Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Quartered Stripes Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 40" x 40"
Jenny Doan shows us how to use striped yardage to create the illusion of a square in a square block in The Quartered Stripes Quilt. We used Kaffe Fassett Stripes for Westminster Fabrics.
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video transcript

Hi everybody. It’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a really fun project for you today. It’s all based on striped fabric. Now this idea has been out there a while. I mean I’ve seen it several times. But recently a lady came to our retreat center and showed us, showed me again this striped fabric project and I thought, Oh my gosh, I’ve got to show you guys. It’s just a great idea. So for the project behind us, the quilts that we’re making today, we’re using Kaffe Fassett Stripes for Westminster. And they’re just gorgeous. It’s just normal striped fabric. But the way you cut it and the way you set it, it’s going to make quilts like these. And they’re just beautiful. We get two blocks here. We get the square in the square block and the block that X’s out like that. And so it’s just really cool.. We even have one over here. This is, this is the denim blue and of course you know I love blue so it’s, it’s just really fun.

So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one and a quarter yards of striped fabric. And this is going to make you look at striped fabric completely different. So I just can’t wait to show you this because it’s really fun. Here is my one and a quarter yard cut of this striped fabric. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to open it up and you’re going to really open it up. So we’re going to open up our selvedges and you’re going to have one big piece right here like this. And you’re going to fold it the opposite way. So now your selvedges are on the sides. So let’s do that. We’re going to fold it right in half. Match up our cut edges. Now what you want to match here, what you really want to watch for is you want your stripes to be lined up exactly. So we are going to pull these over so these line up exactly. See how these are all coming together right here. Make sure they’re lined up exactly. Just like that. Come forward just a little bit. And this takes a bit of, a bit of, a bit of work. But you know the payout is great. So then you’re going to fold it again one more time. Again you’re going to make sure that all your stripes line up. See you can see right here, all my stripes, just if this is over just scoot it. Make sure that it lines up nice and straight. You want to make sure they are nice and straight and they line up all the way atop. All the way across. Alright so this is the main most important part, lining up your stripes. So remember you’re just going to open up your selvedges and fold, all my selvedges are on the sides now. We’re lining up our stripes. And now we’re going to cut ten inch squares.

So I’m just going to take by ruler and I’m going to trim off this selvedge right here. And then I’m going to count over ten right here. And let me count to make sure. Make sure you’re lined up nice and straight. I was a little bit wonky there so I’m going to straighten this out just a little bit. There we go. Clean that up. We’re going to come over ten. And I’m going to count to make sure. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And you’re going to do that the whole length of your fabric. But then you’re going to turn this and cut it into ten again. We want a ten inch square. So I’m going to come over here, make sure I’m lined up on the bottom. Trim off this fold right here. Count ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Alright, right here. And you should have a nice square.

So then what we’re going to do is we are going to take this ten inch square and we are going to cut it diagonally both directions, just like this. So now we cut it this way. And now we cut it this way. Alrighty. Alright, so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to separate these apart just a little bit and we are going to put a pin in each one of these. Each one of these is a block. So we put a pin in here. And we put a pin in here. One pin in each piece, keeping all four pieces together. Alright so you can actually do this to your whole piece of fabric. I mean you just want to keep cutting those ten inch blocks, as many as you can get. It’s going to make a quilt that’s about this size. This before the borders it’s about 35 inches. So it’s not a great big quilt. But if you want it to be bigger you just do another 1 ¼ yards of fabric.

So then we’re going to take these pieces and I want you to watch what happens. So as we, as we put these together, so right here we’re going to take these and we’re going to take them out and we’re just going to start putting them together like this. Look at what’s happening. We’re just going from one to one to one, unfolding them, putting them out. And we have this awesome square in a square. Just from how we cut it. So then we’re going to sew this one together. And I’m just going to lay them right sides together like this and go to the sewing machine and sew this together just a quarter of an inch, regular quarter of an inch. I’m going to kind of look and make sure my stripes are still lined up. And they will be. So I have actually tried this with quite a few fabrics . Because once you make one, it’s so fun. You want to see what’s going to happen. Alright so here’s this one. I’m going to sew, go ahead and sew together these two but I actually want, I’m going to lay this back out and make sure it’s still right because I picked it up but I didn’t remember where I was going. Alright, that’s good. Alright here we go. Line it up and sew a quarter of an inch . And then we’re going to put these together just like this and again I’m going to make sure my stripes are pretty lined up. Because you’re on the bias now, if they’re not exact, like you know if you didn’t get your fabric folded perfect, you can pretty much still make it work. But try to get that folding as good as you can. Again lining up those stripes is the key element here. Alrighty, so now let’s press this. Oh my gosh, they’re so fun. It’s like a little present, every time you, every time you open them up, it’s just like Oh my gosh look at that. Alrighty, so there’s our first block.

Now out of this stack of four that we pinned, you’re going to have two blocks that look like that and then two blocks that look this way. So let me show you this one because this one is just as fun as well. Alright so here we go. We’re going to put this and see you want to watch because all these should make a pattern. Here we go. One more and one more. So look at that. Isn’t that awesome? You’re going to get two completely different blocks out of your cut of fabric. And so out of each cut you’re going to have two that do this and two that do this. And so we’re going to put this one together just like we did this one so we’re going to go ahead and sew these two and sew these two. And then sew these together and we’re going to do that to all four of these. And then I’ll meet you right back here.
So now I’ve got all my blocks sewn. And you can see out of that one cut I got two kind of criss cross blocks and two square in a square blocks. And they all look so different. But of course they’re from the same fabric so they’re going to blend. So now we’re ready to set them together. And you’re just going to sew them right to each other like this. And so you’re going to have your criss cross and your square and your criss cross and your square like this. You know and I”m going to set them here so you can see if a little better so you see how they all go together. Because right here, the way these strips line up this makes a whole other pattern. So let’s take another look at these quilts behind us. This is the fabric that we’re working on right here. And you can see I have four blocks across and I have four down. So four by four. You’re going to get 16 blocks total out of these. And look at all the different interesting patterns as you put it together. So I hope this helps you look at stripes in a whole new way. I mean I just love stripes. The other thing I want to show you is you know Kaffe Fassett he has beautiful fabric, well on the backs of these stripes we added some of his florals. And look at that dot, isn’t that cute? And then look at this one. Isn’t that gorgeous? I love combining his big florals with the stripes. It’s really fun. Even this one has a gorgeous backing. Look how happy that is. And combined with the stripes, it’s so pretty. So I hope this helps you look at stripes in a whole new way. This is really a great fun idea. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Quartered Stripes from the MSQC.

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