A How-to Post Hopefully!

 I thought I would attempt to explain how to do a number of the recent baby quilts.  Several people on Scrap Quilt Enthusiast page on Facebook have asked for individual instructions for the different blocks and quilts.  The blocks are all fairly simple but arranging them properly is the difficult part.

The block for this and the following two quilts is the same.  It is made up of a four-patch in the center which is made with 2 inch strips and finishes to 3 inches.  The rectangles are cut from a light and a dark and measure 3 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 inches.  There are a total of 16 blocks in each of the quilts.  Without borders, they measure 36 x 36 as each block finishes to 9 inches.

You sew them together by the "partial seam" method which means you sew the first seam only halfway down and then work around the block.  At the end, you finish up that seam.

The trick is in the layout.  For each of these quilts, It is a recurrence of the four blocks.  I still have to look at pictures to arrange them properly.

Again, think of this one as recurring pattern of four blocks.

This is like the first but with the dark and lights reversed.

These next two are really variations of the above.  Instead of using straight rectangles, rectangles are cut in half diagonally.  The trickier part of this pattern is that you are dealing with bias along all edges.  You sew them together the same way as the above with the partial seams.  They also contain four patches that finish to 3 inches.

The Electric Quilt pattern with the measurements is below.  16 blocks also measure 36 inches square when done.

Instead of making the rectangles alternate color, I do dark, dark, light, light. The only trick in the cutting is that you have to cut all the pieces from right side up fabric so don't cut from folded fabric or you will get triangles going in two different directions -- ask me how I know!!

This was a pattern given out at our guild so I don't know the source.  It is made up of two blocks that are simple to make.  However, it is very very tricky to get the in the right order.  Again, it is best to think of the in groups of four.

The colored blocks are 4 1/2 finished so 5 inches unfinished in bright colors.  The 36 inch quilt requires 36 of these 5 inch squares.  The sides are made from 2 inch strips.  You cut 7 2 inch strips by the  full width of the fabric from black and from white.  You make 1 strip of black/white/black and one of white/black/white.  You then cut these to 2 inch widths.  You need 18 of each of these.

You take the remaining strips and make two strips that are black/white/black/white and then cut them to give you 36 strips.

You then sew the shorter strips to all the blocks, so you have 18 that have black at the edge and 18 that have white at the edge.  You then attack the longer strips, turning half one way and half the other way so you get the checkerboard affect.  You will then have two piles of completed blocks with checkerboards on two sides.  

This may look easy but it is not!  you really need a design wall of some kind and even then...

This is another super simple quilt.  It is made up of those same 3 inch finished four patches and rectangles that are 7 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches.  You need to make 52 of these blocks to make a quilt 39  inches x 40 inches.