Skylight Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Skylight Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 66" x 74"
Jenny demonstrates how to make a beautiful springtime Skylight quilt using 10 inch squares of precut fabric (layer cake). For this project Jenny chose "Spring Brook" by Corey Yoder for Moda Fabrics. This pretty layer cake quilt is quick, easy, and so much fun!
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video transcript

Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And does this fabric look like springtime or what? We are so hopeful springtime is coming soon. Take a look at this quilt. Isn’t this great? Now all of you guys who are looking for an easy quilt or a beginner friendly quilt this is it for you. It’s three different blocks but only cut two different ways and so it’s just quick and easy. Literally I made it in a morning. So you’re going to love this and let me show you how to do it. So to make this quilt you’re going to need one packet of ten inch squares. And we’ve just used this darling fabric. It’s called Spring Brook. And it’s by Corey Yoder and it’s for Moda fabrics. You’re going to need a half a yard for this first little inner border out here. Your outer border is a yard and a quarter and it’s pretty. And I just want to show you the back of this quilt right here. Look at this fabric. Isn’t this a gorgeous print? It’s just so beautiful. We’ve quilted it with Cotton Candy. That’s our quilting pattern and it just looks beautiful. So I want you to take a look at this binding. See I love a binding with a stripe on it. And anytime a fabric line has a fabric in it that has a bias stripe but you can cut it on a straight of grain, oh I get so excited about it because they make the cutest bindings. And so I’m always looking, when I look at a line, I’m always looking for that little stripe to put on my binding on the edge because I just think it looks so darling. So watch for that in your fabric line.


So let’s look at this quilt behind us. Now this quilt is all made from the blocks within the layer cake. So you’re going to go through your package and you’re going to want to put some contrasting colors together, blocks that are going to show up. Like we have this blue block here and a yellow block. Because the fun is in putting these together and making all these different blocks. So the first block we’re going to talk about today is this block right here. It’s also here, here. It’s the easiest block and it makes one block, actually they’re all easy. It’s just the trick is in the cutting. So we’re going to start by cutting a three inch strip. And so make sure your blocks are lined up exactly. And mine was a little off in that corner. And then lay your ruler on the edge and cut a three inch strip like this. And we’re cutting two squares remember. Move that apart, cut another three inch strip like this. And then you should have a piece left like this that is four inches. We are going to turn that. And we’re going to cut two three inch strips here. So here’s one piece. Here’s one piece. And that should leave you with a four inch square. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to lay these out like this. We’re going to put this piece here, or we’re going to turn these pieces sideways actually and put pieces on either side. And then just the center block we’re going to swap. So we’re going to put the yellow in the center like this. And then when we do the yellow block we’ll put the blue. So you can actually stick this guy right under here and do that.


So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to sew our end pieces to this middle right here like this. Let me put it over here so you can see it. So we’ve got two end pieces to this middle right here. And then we’re going to add the two side pieces. So a quarter of an inch down the side. They should all measure the same on the side. I mean if you did, if you have extra hanging over you know you’ve got them going the wrong direction so just go ahead and make sure those are in the right place. And then we’re going to put this one on this side here and stitch it down, a quarter of an inch. Alright I’m going to press these open because we want it to be nice and flat when we add our side pieces. And I’m pressing these to the outside but it doesn’t matter because they don’t match up to anything. So press them how you want. And then we’re going to add these side pieces. Now you can see right away that this side piece because I’ve taken two seams it’s going to be a little bit longer. I’m not going to worry about that. I’m going to sew it on and I’ll trim it up when I’m done. So we’re going to add one of these three inch strips to either side of this. So here’s this one right here going on. Let me lay down that seam. And then what I like to do is I like both of my extra pieces that are hanging over, I want them to be on the same side. That’s just personal preference. You can cut them off either side. But I’m just going to lay this one on here and flip this piece over and then sew this one down the side. Alright so this is our first block. And you can see right here, I’m just going to set these over here because that will sew up for the second block on this. And I’m not going to press this open or unfold it. I like to leave them closed. This block should measure nine inches. And closed like this I can just take my ruler and I can cut off both pieces just like this. And then we can iron that open and our first block is done. So you can see with just a little bit of, you know, just changing them out makes a really cute little block. So let me show you how to make the second block.


So this is the second block we’re going to make. And the third block, the cuts are identical. We just arranged them differently. So again what we’re going to do is we are going to find two pieces of fabric that have some contrast. And so I’ve got a yellow and a blue here. And the first cut on this block is going to be a two inch cut. So again make sure your squares are lined up exactly. Come in and give a two inch cut right here. Alright we’ll scoot that aside. Our next cut is going to be a three inch cut right here. And we’re going to cut that. And this big cut is our other side. Now this center piece right here we’re going to turn sideways. And we’re going to cut two two inch pieces. So they’re two by three. And two by three. And then this is our center right here. Now let me show you these two blocks. So here is our block right here. And if we’re going to use the center block we’re going to rotate it like this. So we put the color on top and then we’re just going to put these on either side like this and put that together and sew that up. That is one block.


Now if we want to do, so let me show you this block right here. So that’s this block right here, ok? If we want to make this block, it’s the same cuts. You’re just going to do them differently. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to decide that we want this yellow right here to be in our little window. Our blue is going to go on top. And then our blue is going to be the long part down here to make this block. So out of these two cuts you’re going to get three different blocks.


So let’s go ahead and sew this one up. And I have extra fabric on here so I’m going to take that off. Sew the two blues together. The yellow is our little window in here. And I keep calling them windows. I called them windows the whole time and we decided at the end to call the quilt Skylight because, you know, skylights are all different sizes and it’s just such a fun, happy, bright quilt. These are definitely my colors. I love these. Alright, finger press those down, add the long bar to the bottom, sew across and that’s our little center piece right now. And so we are going to press this. And then we’re going to add our two side pieces right here. The blue. We’ll add this small one to one side and the large on to the other. And honestly you can turn these blocks different directions so it doesn’t really matter which side you add them to. But I like to start at the top and sew down. And remember you’re going to have to cut off a little piece because we’ve taken two seams in there. Alright now I’m going to flip this over and sew on this side. Make sure it’s lined up. Sew down the side. And then we’re going to trim this off. So right here, you know, you can lay it, make sure your block is nine inches. Make sure you’re cutting on the nine inch line. I’ve got to find my rotary cutter under my blocks and trim that off right there. Then when we press this open this is the block we get. Now remember if we want our long piece to be the center we’re going to keep the two little ones on this. Now you have to cut two sets to do that. Like I could not make a different one out of this one. They have to be the same out of both sets. So the cutting is the same but the putting together is going to be a little bit different.


So let’s look at the quilt behind me. So we’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, by seven blocks. That’s 42. That’s the whole layer cake. But how we put them together was we put a big one, the long one and a little one. We did one, two, three, one, two, three. But we turned them all different ways so that they would do it. And then they kind of ended up kind of cascading like this. So like you see these center ones all kind of follow a pattern down here like this. Obviously you can do it anyway you want to. But it worked together for us. It gave us a quilt that was 66 by 75. And so it came together really cute. It’s a great beginner quilt but it looks like you worked really hard. So we hope you enjoyed this Skylight quilt from the MSQC.


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