Treasure Box Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Treasure Box Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 39" x 44"
Time: 13 minutes
Jenny demonstrates how to make a half square triangle quilt out of charm packs. She used a "Hopscotch Chill" Charm Pack by Jamie Fingal for RJR Fabrics and a "Kona Cotton - White" Charm Pack by Robert Kaufman Fabrics. This pattern combines Square in a Square and Chevron blocks.! To square up her blocks quickly and easily, Jenny used Clearly Perfect Slotted Trimmers by Kari Carr for New Leaf Stitches.
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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. Recently I was in Australia teaching this half square triangle class and one of the gals said, oh I love all these ideas. And she said recently I made one like this. And she put hers together in this one and I was like, ah! That’s going to make an awesome tutorial. So I can’t wait to show you how we did that. Now we were dealing with large half square triangles and remember it’s not the size of the block but as long as they’re all the same size that matters. So we’re going to make this one with little tiny half square triangles and I can’t wait to show you how to do it. So let’s look at the quilt behind me. So there are two blocks here. We’ve got our chevron block and we’ve got our square in the square block. And so let me show you how to do that. So this quilt is only 39 by 44. And to make this little baby quilt all you’re going to need is one charm of color and one charm of white. And so we have used this Hopscotch by Jamie Fingal for RJR. Really a cute line. And then we just used a regular pack, a Kona pack solid white to go along with it. And that’s all we used for it. For our little tiny border out here, it’s just a tiny bit of fabric, a half a yard for that outer border and they’re four inch strips. And you’re going to need a ¼ of a yard of this tiny, we did a tiny little inch and a half strip right here in the middle. And you’re going to need a ¼ of a yard for that. So just a few little pieces so not too much yardage. Now remember pre cuts, this is how they work. One makes a baby, two makes a crib, three makes a lap, four makes a twin. So just remember that if you want a bigger quilt which I get asked a lot of times, how do you make this quilt bigger. Well they’re either going to increase the number of packs or you’re going to increase the size of your triangles.

Now what we’re going to do with this one today is we’re going to take our colored one and we’re going to take a solid white background square. And we’re going to put those right sides together like this. And we are going to sew all the way around the outside edge because we are making half square triangles and we’re going to make four out of this little charm. So let’s go to the sewing machine and do that. And we’re just going to sew a quarter of an inch all the way around so here we go. A lot of times people ask me if I stop and pivot on the corner or if I sew right off. I generally sew right off. Alrighty, you’re going to do that to all your squares. Now I want to show you something right here. Oh you can’t see it too well. I thought it puckered right here. Sometimes when you get to that last corner there’s a pucker and that won’t matter because we are cutting right through that. And we’re going to square them up as well. So what I’m going to do I’m going to take this two five inch ones that we’ve sewn together all the way around on the outside. And by the way this quarter of an inch doesn’t matter as much, the size of it doesn’t matter as much as that it’s the same on all four sides. So we’re going to now cut these diagonally corner to corner just like this. So we’re going to go here and then we’re going to turn our ruler and go here and this just lays right corner to corner.

Now I have something really fun to show you. You know I talk a lot about rulers and how they have to make sense in your brain. There are loads of products out there. And for most of us certain ones make sense in our brain and so if there’s a ruler that has too much stuff on it it’s too much for me or if you know the colors are wrong it’s too much for me. And so I’m really careful about the rulers I use because I know that it’s easier for me to make a mistake. One of the things I have struggled with my whole life is squaring. You know I’ve used the tools that are out there to square and it just, you know I have to think so hard when I do it. And there’s a new product on the line that I’m so excited about it because it makes squaring so much easier. So we’re not even going to iron these open. We’re going to leave them just like this. The product is called Slotted Trimmers right here. And it’s by Clearly Perfect Slotted Trimmers. This is what it looks like. It’s by Carrie Carr for New Leaf. And I am super excited about this because it makes squaring easy for me. So for the first time I’m not stressed or worrying about what’s happening to my brain.

So let me show you how to do this. We are going to square these little triangles, these little half square triangles to three inches. And one of the sets is done for all the half inch blocks and one is done for all the whole inch blocks. So you’re just going to look on here and see where your seam line is right here. You’re going to find your three inch seam line here and you’re going to match seam line to seam line just like this. So we’re going to lay that right on there. Make sure it lines up exactly with your seam line. And then you just cut side to side like this. This side and this side. So just like that your block is squared. Now one added thing she’s done on here, she has these little teardrops which means you can come in at the corner and you can just run your rotary cutter out like that. And it chops off the little dog ears. And so I am just really excited about this. Let me walk you through this a couple more times. We have four to do right here. Sometimes when you line your thing on the line you can get this side so perfect that you’ll only need to cut one side. Can you tell how excited I am about this. I”m just loving this little thing. Alright let me go ahead and cut my little slots. These are set up so you can either cut in toward you which always makes me a little nervous or out which I always feel a little more comfortable about. And you can use a small, I mean any size rotary cutter you want to use it works. But you just lay, match your seam line to the tool’s seam line, your stitch line I mean. And then you just cut either side and you’re ready to go. Alrighty, here we go. And it has that nice scraping edge on it. I’m sorry. I just really like it. Alrighty, let me trim off these little dog ears right here.

Alright now we’re ready to press these open. So I”m going to lay them with the dark to the top and set my seams and we’re just going to roll these back now keeping it to the dark side, our seam to the dark side. Make sure there’s no pleats in your little, your little seam allowance. Now I want to show you one right here. So see this one right here that has a little peak on it. That means that my seam wasn’t laid up exactly on the edge of the seam. So I have to go back and look at it again. And I’m going to flip this over and make sure that this seam line here matches their seam line. So I’m going to line that right up on here. And see it just, it was a hair off. And so I’m just going to trim that edge. And that should take care of that little, that little peak right there. Yes. So, so that looks really good. And now what we’re going to do is make our blocks.

We’re making two blocks with this quilt. We’re making the square in a square and we’re making the chevron block. So first we’re going to do the square in a square. And it’s going to go together like this. You put all your color to the center and sew that together like a four patch. So let’s go ahead and do that. . I”m just going to fold those over and make sure that they’re lined up nice perfect lines. And if I sew them right I won’t even have to snip my thread because they’ll be matched up exactly how they should go. Alright and what I mean by that is when I open them they should fit together just like that. And they do. And so I’m going to take a few anchoring stitches and then I’m going to go right to the center seam and I’m going to make one seam lay one way and one the other. And then I’m just going to guide it through my machine, keep my finger on that seam and guide it through. Alright, now let me just press that open. Alrighty that looks pretty good. I’m just going to trim off this edge right here which means this little tiny peak right here. Just so it looks nice and square. And then we get to make the chevron block.

And I will make the chevron block with the one I cut. So with the chevron block it’s two together like this on the top. And then these two, see here the color goes together. And with the chevron block the white goes together just like this. And again we’re just going to sew this together like a four patch. So I”m going to take these two and these two and bring them over to my sewing machine. Alright so again a quarter of an inch. Make sure your seam allowances are the same. Match these up and then let’s sew these two together. Again you’re going to open them and look to make sure they’re going the right way, lay them on top of each other. Line up your edge and then do that little anchoring stitch and then I’m going to make one seam go, the seams are going to go opposite directions. That’s called nesting. And we’re going to make one go one way and one go the other. Alrighty now let’s press this open making sure that we don’t have any folds in our pleat line. And this seam is wanting to go up so I’m going to press that up back here. And then I’m going to come back over to the front and make sure that lays nice and flat. Alrighty.

Alright so now what you’re going to do is you’re going to put rows of these together. Now I have some cut here. Just let me clear off a little space for you. And ooh I left my rotary cutter open. That’s a no no. Alright so we’re going to do a row where we sew our chevrons together just like this. And we’re going to make a row. And let’s look at how many we have here. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, chevrons sewn together and one, two, three, four, five, six, the same number of blocks. So here’s our blocks. And I’m going to. Let me just scoot this whole row over here. There we go. And then I’m going to put a block row up. We want different colors, two, three, four just like that. And we’ll have six on each row. And I believe there’s seven rows, let’s look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, yes. And so when you put them together your first row, your chevrons are going to go down like this. And then you have your blocks. The next row the chevrons are going to point down so see how they’re pointing up right here, these are going to point down. And you do that. And that’s what makes this secondary zig zag right along here. And it makes it a really cute quilt.

So it’s easy to go together. It’s easy to make. It just makes it fun. Remember if you want a bigger quilt either add more packs or make your block bigger. Because when you sew around a ten inch square you’re going to get blocks that are about six inches big. So it makes a whole big difference to what size block you’re using. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Treasure Box quilt from the MSQC.

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