How to join up Quilt as you Go blocks and borders - Quilting Tips & Techniques 074

hello today i'd like to show you how to put together the quilt as you go blocks so i've been showing you how you can do some quilters you go with strips some quilters you go with appliques how to prepare your borders and finally we're going to get to put some of it together so i've started putting together some here so we're actually using some strips of fabric for our joining so we've got it this is the front side obviously and this is what we're going to see is a colored strip on that side and then on the back side we're going to see also a colored strip now it could be the same fabric or it can be different fabrics as you can see i've used different fabrics here so we cut our blocks or i cut my blocks to nine and a half inches and that's the size they're going to stay they don't get taken in with seams or anything like that and then i've cut my strips i'm using this really cute little stripe for the strip on the back and then i've got this blue for the front now i have cut the back strips one inch wide and the same length as the size of the block so they're one inch wide by nine and a half inches long i think it's a really good idea to cut them to the right length before you sew them so that things can't sort of travel and move when you've got the batting and everything in the fabric things can kind of move and you might find that they get a little bit short or tight or long or something and the front strip is actually a two inch wide strip but i've pressed it in half so that the raw edges meet and that also i've cut to length so i'll show you now how we join them so on the back i'm going to lay right sides together my strip level with the raw edges of the block and i'm going to flip that over and then i'm going to lay the blue strip on the right side also with the raw edges level now you may find you want to pop a couple of pins in there as we know i'm not really a pin person but i'll use pins today and this is partly so that we can make sure things are feeding evenly if you've got a walking foot a walking foot's a really good idea because we're going through so many thicknesses including a batting which makes it quite spongy what the walking foot does is it feeds from the top as well as the underneath so you get this more even feed going on so i'm going to go to the sewing machine now i'm just going to sew a quarter inch seam allowance and away from that edge as as you would normally do just your quarter inch all the way down on there so i'm all set from a quarter inch and i'll just sew it all the way down taking those pins out as i go now i'm going to be doing this joining up entirely by machine if you're wanting to do some hand sewing and slip stitch it down you need to do all this in reverse but we'll just go with the machine at the moment so i've got that on there now i've got my quarter inch seam allowance and i've got my strip there and my folded strip on the front so now we need to make and this is a little bit tight this next part but we need to sew this strip to the back of this piece now so that's got to go right sides together so that on the back you'll have that strip joining it so again if you feel that you'd like to pop some pins in and this is going to be a little bit fiddly because this the bulk of this seam that you've just sewn kind of wants to get in the way but you've got to just tell it where it belongs and keep on sewing and trying to keep your quarter inch seam allowance even if you can because our fabrics are all cut to the same length everything should fit nicely so now we're just going to go and can you see what i've done there i've got my strip pinned in between there so if i lay it down i've just got a tight little area here but but your sewing machine should fit in there fine you're just doing the quarter inch seam allowance along there so you can just hold this other seam out of the way a little bit as you go so just take it slowly don't need to rush remember you've already quilted your quilt you're nearly done so a walking foot's a good idea as you can see this kind of all wants to move around a little bit just keep an eye on it keep rearranging it if you need to to make sure that it all stays in place i'd much rather take my time over this and have it right unpick it i don't pick very often okay now that can come out of there and it should be all sorted so this what will happen now if you've got your quarter inch seam allowance right is those little areas that are in the seam allowance should now just sit together quite comfortably they shouldn't be overlapping there shouldn't be any gaps they should just sit together so that when we fold this over which we're going to do and cover that it's not over a great fat ridge or anything it's just a little bit of a ridge because it's an extra piece of fabric and on the back we should have a nice half inch wide strip because we started with one inch we've taken quarter of an inch off each side and that's looking pretty good so now what we're going to do is make sure that's all sitting nice and flat and we're just going to flip this folded bit over a little bit like you do a binding so this is where i was saying if you were wanting to hand stitch that down you could either do that on the front or you would put this part on the back and you would have that strip on the front i'm going to machine mine down now because it's this wide it will come just past a seam allowance there so on the back you will actually see if you look hard a little tiny line of sewing just next to your colored strip if you've matched your threads to the back you're really not going to notice that in the end and it doesn't worry me to have that little line of sewing there if it bothers you you might be better to do it the other way around and hand sew this down but i would never get mine finished if i was hand sewing so again if you want to pop some pins in and just to hold that in place but i'm just going to stitch now on the front very close to that folded edge of my blue fabric and i have got a matching blue thread in the top but i've left my neutral on the back so i will actually see my back stitching but it's not wearing me so that's it so there we are all nicely joined up and nicely joined up on the back so that's all ready to do the next strip and join that together but i've actually already done the next little bit so i can show you how it's all going to go together so i've already joined up these two rows of blocks because i was only having nine blocks and i've pre-cut like i had pre-cut the lengths to go between the blocks when i've joined the row i've also pre-cut that to the length when we measured for the borders we found that the three nine and a half inch square blocks measured 28 and a half inches long so i knew that i could cut my strips that long so on the back i've got all that little colored stripe going on there which is quite fun so i've joined my rows and i've joined the border on that side so i can now go ahead and join that row on there and i've already got my strips cut here so i cut them the 28 and a half inches and that will be because nothing's changed size all we've done is is put those um seams together and add those strips over the top just to cover the seam so that you can see that that is actually the right length at 28.5 inches so nothing has changed which is really good you can kind of be all organized with this quilt um and then i've got my other border to go on that side there now in the corners because of the way i'm doing the borders i wanted some little colored squares so i've already joined those on the end i had quilted some little squares and they're going in the corners so they're already on there now so i'll do i can do this whole bit through i can join up these rows put the two borders on the sides and then i can do the long strip down here and i've already pre-cut my strips to go along there it was my 28 and a half inches plus my five inches each end for the border so that's 10 inches so that was a 38 and a half inches so they're already pre-cut which is great so there's my quilt just about done and everything else when i joined the little squares on the border i put it on exactly the same way as i've joined all these together so that's how it's going to go together it's not hard to do just take your time and you'll find it's a really nice neat little way of making a quilt and with borders as well if you want to a lot of people don't put the borders on they just bind the blocks but i thought it would be quite nice to have borders as well and i think if you've chosen your fabrics nicely for the back you can have a really nice looking back on your quilt as well and how fun is that to have a reversible quilt so hopefully that helps you put together your quilt as you go applique or piece work and some borders if you want to pretty much anything you feel like doing so that's about it for quilt as you go thank you

Channel: GourmetQuilter

Views: 1,643,909

Rating: 4.9191823 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, quilting, patchwork, joining up, quilt as you go, borders, blocks, fabric, cutting, sewing, craft

Id: ji8BLS2rNHA

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2013