Rose Garden Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Rose Garden Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 67" x 67"
Jenny Doan demonstrates how to make a beautiful floral half square triangle quilt using 5-inch squares of precut fabric (charm packs). Learn how to quickly make half square triangles and wonky leg blocks.
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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. Take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this great? This is so fun. I love the look of the half square triangles combined with these wonky leg blocks which I’m going to show you how to make. Doesn’t it make a cool pattern. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is two packs of five inch squares. You’re going to use all the pack plus one five inch square you’re going to get from your border yardage. You’re going to need some background yardage. You’re going to need a yard and a half of two colors that will help the rest of your fabric to pop. We’ve used this navy and white, a yard and a half of that. And then you’re going to need this outer border yardage right here. And you can see our wonky legs have gone all the way out into the border. So what you’re going to need for the outer border is you’re going to need 1 ¼ yards for that. On the backing you’re going to need 4 ¼ yards. And we’ve used the cute blue roses. One of the prints that’s in the line, it looks really, really cute.

So let me show you how to make this because this is really a fun quilt and super easy. A lot times we get charm packs and we’ll get one or two of them and we’re not sure what to do with them. Well this is the perfect thing to do with two charm packs because that’s all it takes. And so we’ve got these little five inch squares right here and just like that our first block is done. So now for the next block we’re going to focus on our half square triangles. And so to make those I have my navy yardage and my white yardage. And I have stacked it just like this so that I can get more cuts. I like to keep mine folded mostly because, because it’s easier for me to cut straight in a shorter distance. But you do have to make sure they’re lined up exactly or you’re get that funny elbow which in this case won’t matter because you’re going to sub cut them into little squares. So the first thing I’m going to do is clean up this edge right here just like that. And then I’m going to come over and cut 5 ½ inches. So 5 ½, don’t get caught up in the, in the regular measurements because I need to make five inch half square triangles so the method I chose to do this was to go ahead and cut these so that I was, they would end up being five inches square.

And I’m going to do the sew two from one square method. So let’s go ahead and let me cut a couple of squares from these and let me show you how I did that. I trimmed off my selvedge right here, just like that. And I’m coming over. I know my ruler is five plus another half an inch so 5 ½. And you’re going to do that, you’re going to do that to all your strips. So then we’re going to draw our line corner to corner like this. And we’re going to lay it on top of a blue square that we just cut like this. We’re going to lay these down and we’re going to sew on either side of this line. Now you can see right here, see how I have a little, you know, a little line that kind of goes off. Make sure your line is straight corner to corner. My ruler slipped a little bit and veered. If it does that just draw another line and cut right through them so it’s not going to matter. So let’s go over here and, excuse me, and sew a quarter of an inch on either side of this. Alright here we go. And you actually want to make sure this is kind of a bit of a scant quarter. You don’t, you want to make sure your quarter of an inch is pretty close on because we’re dealing with. We only have a quarter of an inch on either side of that square because we want them to end up five inches. So just watch that your quarter of an inch doesn’t get too fat. Alright.

So now what we’re going to do is we are going to cut right in between these two lines like this. And then we’re going to square our blocks up. To square the blocks I love the clearly perfect slotted trimmer that’s my favorite. You guys know that. And we’re looking to make a five inch square. So I’m going to lay my stitch line on their stitch line. And I’m going to trim this on both sides. Now you can see right here. See you don’t have much room. That’s why you want to make sure that that little quarter of an inch doesn’t get too fat on you because you’re not trimming much. Alright let’s go ahead and trim this one. And again this little slotted trimmer is cool because it has, this has all the whole sizes on it and the other one has the halves. And so again it’s five inches we’re trimming to because we want it to stay the same size as our charms. Now we’re just going to set that seam and iron it back. And these, let me show you where these go in the quilt. So every other one you have a regular five inch square and a half square triangle. Regular, half, regular, half, regular, half. All those rows. Then these middle rows I make the long wonky legs.

And so to make that block what we’re going to do is we’re going to cut from our same background fabric, five inch strips of navy and white. And I’m going to go ahead and cut two right here. Oops I’ve got to cut with a rotary cutter not a pen. A pen’s not going to do me much good. And, and actually it’s just the white we need to cut for these squares because the navy is going to be cut a different size. So let me go ahead and cut a couple of five inch white squares. This size square, this one we’re just adding legs to. It doesn’t change the size of it so we just want to cut. I’m going to cut my selvedges off here. And then I’m going to scoot this up here and then I’m going to cut five inch squares. And you’re going to need like 16 of these. Alright there’s our little five inch squares. Let me make sure this is five. Oh it’s a hair big on this one side. Let me trim that. It just looked a little long to me all of a sudden. So five inches square. So to make the legs we’re going to cut a three by six inch piece of fabric out of our background. And we’ve got a three inch strip here and I’m just going to sub cut that down into six inches starting by cutting off my little selvedge. And then I’m going to scoot this right along that edge. And I’m going to go five, six inches. Alright.

Now what we’re going to do is we are going to take our five inch square and I am going to press this so it lays nice and flat. It’s got a little fold in there from the fabric when it was on the bolt. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our three by six inch pieces. And we are going to just eyeball this. And I actually really love this kind of sewing because you really can do whatever you want. We’re going to make sure, this is our half right here on the top. I’ve pressed a little crease. We’re going to make sure that this fabric goes across the half. And we’re going to pull it really close down to this bottom point just like this. And we’re going to sew all the way down there. So let’s go over here and do that. Alright so now I’m just going to sew that right down the side of this. And then we’re going to press this back. So just open this up right here. Set and then open. And then I’m going to leave this one on there and I’m going to attach the other leg which means I’m going to come across the middle again and then down, you can even go right to the corner, as far down as you want to go. And we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch on that. Alright now we’re going to iron this one back. And just like that we have our wonky legs. But they look really wonky. So we need to trim them down. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to flip this over and I’m going to use my smaller ruler and I’m going to line it right up along the edge of the five inch square. And I’m going to cut this one. And then I’m going to cut it across the top. And what I like about these is that these legs are traditionally made using templates. And this is an easy way to do it where you don’t need the template. And so there we go. Alright. Now these legs aren’t exactly the same. But you’ll notice on most of my squares that my legs aren’t exactly the same either. So but it still gets the look and it creates the desired effect for the design.

Alright so let’s talk about this layout. When I do a quilt like this on my design wall because I’m angley challenged I start from my center block. Here’s my center block right here. And so I get my, my little charm pack, my little five inch square and I put my wonky legs all pointing this way. Now you have to really watch this because if you’re angley challenged like I am I had some of these turned around so they made star legs which is a whole different quilt. But this way we’ve got the legs, we’ve got the large white part, the V part up next to this square. And so then as you laid it out I made a whole row going this way and I made that center row. Then I filled in with these quadrants so this one has you know the color up, charm, color up, charm, color up, charm. And this whole quadrant is that way. And then this one is the opposite way. And so it just goes together so quick and easy.

And let me just start a little center block here so you can see what I’m talking about. So here’s our little center block. Here’s some of our legs that are going in this way, this way, this way. And then you have more squares in around here. This way. Do you see how fast this is going to go together because all you do is make these, oop we don’t want that one there. All you do is make these, these two little blocks and then you start adding in your half square triangles which are going to go this way on this side like this. Do you see? I hope that’s not confusing for you. Oh no, look it! Oh there we go. Fixed. See you’ve got to watch those things. You’ve really got to put it on the board and take a look at it because if this one right here, if one of them gets turned around it’s going to mess up your whole look. And you’re probably not going to notice it until it’s quilted and that’s the worst. So go ahead and take a good look at it make sure they’re on there. You’re going to lay them out just like this is laid out because it’s super easy. Now one of the things I want to mention is I brought this wonky leg right out into the border on all four sides. I thought that was a really fun way to get the full effect of that swooping motion that went all the way out. It didn’t just stop here with a full border but I pulled it right out into the border.

This was just really fun to make. And it’s just a quick and easy pattern. And you can make it with just two charm packs. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Rose Garden quilt from the MSQC.

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