Turn Style Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Turn Style Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 85" x 85"
Time: 17 minutes
Jenny Doan demonstrates how to make a beautiful Turn Style quilt using 10 inch squares of precut fabric (layer cakes). For this project Jenny chose "Flower Market" 10" Stackers by Jen Allyson for Riley Blake. Learn a quick and easy way to make quarter square triangles and turn them into hourglass blocks.
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video transcript

Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. And I have a really fun project for you today and I’m always excited to show you a new trick or tip. And this quilt has one of those in it. So let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this a great quilt? This is the block we’re talking about right here. You can see by the color, where the blocks stand out and it just makes such a fun quilt. It’s quick and easy to make and I love this fabric. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares of print. And we have used Flower Market by Jen Allison for Riley Blake Designs. So one package of ten inch squares of print. One package of ten inch squares of white. Then we’re going to do this border out here. Now you see our border has some, you know, little half square triangles because I wanted to finish that pinwheel out in the border. I love when things finish out into the border. And so you’re going to need a half a yard of background fabric for that. For your outer border, your outer border you’re going to need a yard and a half. And we used a nice big six inch border on here. And look at this binding. I just love when we have a print that actually makes a beautiful binding. The binding is going to be ¾ of a yard. And for the backing on this we used 45 fabric. You’re going to need 7 ¾ yards if you do that. And we used this nice big floral on here. And I always love it when we pay attention to the quilting because the quilting patterns are so fun to see how they look out. Everything we do at Missouri Star is edge to edge but we have lots of different patterns to choose from.

So my inspiration for this quilt came during Birthday Bash this last year when I saw Barb and Mary’s quilt. I love the way they did it. I thought it was really fun and I thought what if I did this with a different block. So I can hardly wait to show you how to do this so let’s get to it. Alright so how we’re going to make this is we’re going to take a square of color and a square of background fabric. This is your packet of white, your packet of color and we’re going to take those and put them right sides together and we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the sides, just the two sides, not all the way around, just the sides. So we’re going to go over here and do that. And we’re going to sew this a quarter of an inch right down the side. Now what I like to do is just flip it around like that. Alright so now we’ve sewn the sides and we’re ready to cut it. So grab a ruler that goes corner to corner on your square like this. So remember we’ve only sewn the sides here. Move this out of the way and make sure you guys can see everything. So we’ve only sewn the sides, we’re going to lay our ruler corner to corner on here and we’re just going to make a cut like this. Alright now what you get when you do that, and remember this works with any size square, is a quarter square triangle. Look at that. So then we’re going to press it. Let me grab my iron up here. We’re going to press this. We’re going to set our seam and then we’re going to roll it back so the seam stays on the dark side. You want to make sure that you do this to both sides so that seam stays hidden. The other thing it will do is it will make our seams nest when we put them together because they’re going to go together like this and it’s going to form a giant hourglass. See how that’s going to go together. So we’re going to lay these on top of each other now and I’m going to nestle in these seams. And you can feel, did you see me just move my fingers like that. I’m just, my seam was kind of sitting on top and move it a little bit, it just rolls in and then we’re going to go ahead and take this over to the sewing machine. It’s all lined up. We’re going to take this over to the sewing machine. We’re going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. So here we go with this. Making sure it’s still nested up really nice and tight because that little seams matters. You know, it’s always good to know the seams that you really want to pay attention to because sometimes we can just sew along and it doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to make any difference in the long run but that little middle seam is going to matter. Alright a quarter of an inch all the way down. We’re going to press this open. Now this seam doesn’t matter which way you press it because they’re all going to be, they don’t really touch up to each other. So I just like them to lay the same direction. And so you can see right here my, I ironed from the top to make sure it’s nice and flat and then this seam all goes the same way. Alright.

So once you get your block finished you’re going to want to square it to 13. And what I like to do is I just like to make sure that my middle, you know, this middle stays in the middle. And then I’ll trim it on either side so that I know that it’s 13. So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to count over. And I”m actually going to have to start this on a line right here. And I”m going to count over one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13 so I know 13 comes here. I have this little bit, like a half an inch over here. So I kind of want to make that, you know, just even that up and take the same off of each side. So I”m going to lay it like that and then I’ll bring my ruler and we’ll square this up to 13. And I’m just going to take this little bit off right here and I’m going to take a little bit off over here like this. And if you’re right handed you’re going to do this the other direction. Alright, like that. So now we know it’s 13 side to side. We need to make sure it’s 13 top to bottom. So again it looks like, I’m going to count off my blocks. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13. And it looks like I have about the same amount on either side. So we’re going to go ahead and trim those off too. There’s a 13 on that side, make sure it’s still lined up and a 13 on this side. So now we have this great big block and it lends itself to all kinds of things.

So I decided that I wanted to cut in from the sides. And because it’s so big I’m going to cut in three inches on all four sides. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this right here and I’m laying my three inches right along this edge and I’m going to make a cut like this on both sides. So I’m going to come over here and I’m going to lay it three inches like this and I”m going to make that same cut. Now this block is so large that it didn’t work on my rotating mat so I’m just going to rotate these right here to keep safe. So we’re keeping everything in the same position. We’re just going to put it back together but just rotate it so I can cut safely. So as you can see this block is too big for my rotating mat. So I wanted to show you some alternative ways to do this. And basically most quilters have an 18 by 24 mat and any size mat will work as long as it’s just a little bigger than your block. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to lay our block on here and we’re going to use our ruler and we’re going to come in and we’re going to cut this three inches from the edge. Now this all remains the same like this. But when we need to cut this, look at this, our mat is rotating. So don’t be afraid to not touch your fabric and just rotate the mat. A lot of times we forget that those mats are movable and we end up moving all of our pieces. And just like that I can turn this and do both sides. And so this makes it so much easier when you view all mats as a rotating mat. I mean it is handy to have a rotating mat but don’t feel like you can’t do this and you can’t cut it if you don’t have one. So we are rotating our mat and you can obviously tell I am most comfortable and love to cut from this right hand side. So that’s why even on the side pieces I turned my mat. And as you can see now our block is ready to go.

So now we’ve cut this, you can see we have all these pieces here like this. So what we’re going to do first is we’re going to turn our hourglass so that the white matches up to the color and the color matches up to the white. These corners we’re going to flip right around so it does the same thing. So it’s white to the color, color to the white. And we’re going to do that on all four sides. And it basically means that these two are going to go in and these two are also going to go in, like this. They go into the middle. And you’re just going to turn those. And this is now your block. So then we’re going to sew this together. And I”m going to do it in rows. So we’re going to do this little row first. And again remember your color goes to the white on both sides.

So let’s sew that. And we’re going to lay this on here and sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. There we go and then this one too. Make sure they’re going to same direction. And then I’m going to put this back down and I”m going to pick up this middle part and I know that my colored pieces go against the white. And I say those little things over and over to make sure that I’m not getting it wrong. You know it’s one of those things where we all get our sewing machine and we start sewing along and it’s good to have those little mantras that keep us going. Alright here’s this side. A quarter of an inch right down the side. Alright this is our middle. So we’ve got our top right here, our middle and now our bottom. And we’re going to go ahead and sew these on a quarter of an inch. Flip it around and do the other side. There we go. Alright now we’re ready to sew this block back together. Alright so now we’re ready to sew the three of these back together. We’re going to sew the top and the bottom to our middle section. And you’ll notice I haven’t ironed these. You can iron them if you want to. It makes it nice and flat. I’m just going to go ahead and sew these and then iron all at once. And I”m lining up this first seam. I’m nesting it so I make, my bottom seam is going to go out and my top seam is going to come toward me. And I sew down there and then I’m just going to line them up on the edge. And then right here I”m going to nest this again. And you want to make sure that you nest as you go along because there is bias in this because we’ve cut it both directions and so it can get a little stretchy. And so you just want to be a little more careful. It’s not a reason not to do it, you just want to be a little more careful. Alright now we’re going to flip this around and put it on the other side. You want to make sure this is going the right direction. And it looks good. So we’re going to go ahead and start this side. Again, begin, stop and nest up those seams, make sure they fit snug right together. And we’re going to sew down the side here. Alright now we’re ready to press.

And so we’re going to go over here and just iron this back. I always like to iron from the top. Make sure that there’s no seams or creases that changes the size of our block. Then I flip it over to make sure everything is laying nice. And see these little seams, you know, I’ve got one folded here and just straighten those out. Give it a shot of steam. Straighten this one. This guy wants to be obstinate. He’s probably a teenager. There we go. Alright. So then we have this block and we’re ready to set it into the quilt.

So what I want to do is I want to show you how this is going to go. So see how this one right here is like this. And this next one right here is turned. So then we turn this like this. So what we’re going to do when we put them together is that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to lay these right next to each other. And I’ve got some made over here. And what we’re going to do is we are going to lay these just like this and make a row. And let me look at, oop see you’ll know you’ve got it wrong if you have two colors next to each other because you want the white next to each other. So you want to rotate that. Now what’s going to happen, here let me move stuff right here. What’s going to happen over here, when these blocks come together is we’re going to get a little pinwheel.. I”m going to put my block in over here like this and then I put this black one in over here. And do you see what happens, it forms a pinwheel when they come together. These blocks are always opposite and we’ve got them turned. This one is, you know, there’s things you want to look for, the color and the white go together, the pinwheel forms in the middle. So let’s take a look at the quilt. Right here we’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, across, six blocks down. We used 36 blocks because I wanted to come in here and do this outer border.

Now this outer border out here is basically the same as this piece right here. And so you’re going to cut a three inch strip of fabric, you know, for your borders and you’re going to put your little half square triangles on either end. And that’s how you finish up that border. You’re going to make this piece right here. So when I did the little half square triangles to make sure they fit because these happen naturally but the ones for the border you have to make. They are three inch half square triangles. So basically what I did was I cut my layer cake in fourths and put two together like a white and a color, sewed all the way around them and cut them both directions to make half square triangles like we do. We often do this with the big ten inch squares, but like I always say you can use any square to do this. If you use a five inch charm, you’re going to cut it both directions like this and you’re going to get four. So once you get them cut we’re going to iron them. We’re going to come over here and press them open. And then because all the other half square triangles in the quilt are three inches, because we cut three inches from the side, you want to square these to three inches. And you can use any method you like. You can use the clearly perfect slotted trimmer, you can use the block lock, you can use a regular square, whatever you want. They just need to be three inches. And then our strip that we cut is going to be three inches wide by seven inches long and it has the two half square triangles on either end. So once you get your piece together and you’re ready to put it in the border you can see right here, our little half square triangles are seven inch by three inch piece of background fabric and our other little half square triangle, this is how it fits in there. To make a pinwheel, every other one you’ve got to flip like this. So you put one straight like this and then the next one you flip like this and you’re going to sew them together and it’s going to go all the way around the whole quilt. And it just makes it so cute. I love when a quilt finishes out into the border. I just really love that look. This makes a quilt that is 85 by 85 so it’s a great size quilt, a fun easy project and we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Turn Style quilt from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

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