Quilt As You Go Tutorial

04/19/2011

Have you ever wondered what "quilt as you go" was? Or how to do it? You are in luck! I have a great tutorial brought to you today by the lovely Leanne of she can quilt and myself! We are guest posting today over at Lily's Quilts, click here to check out her awesome blog, full of tutorials and all sorts of goodies!

The photos below are mine, but all of the wording is Leanne (which is really the hard part, to me anyway!) Enjoy the tutorial:

Finished Quilted Blocks

Today Leanne from she can quilt and Marci from Marci Girl Designs are blogging together as a guest post on Lily's Quilts.

To us, one of the scariest parts of a QAYG approach to quilt construction is how to join all those blocks without making a HOT MESS. Would the quilt have lumpy seams? Would the batting wad up into bumps?

One method is to leave the off the backing while you quilt the front and batting together. Then you sew together the front/batting blocks and add the backing at the end. This allows you to have a continuous backing piece but the quilting from the front will not show on it. Penny at sewtakeahike has a tutorial for this method here.

Some methods use strips applied with, or without, additional batting between the QAYG blocks. The strips can be wide or skinny and add an interesting design element to the quilt. Marianne at The Quilting Edge has tutorials here and here. Sew We Quilt @ Stash Manicure has a tutorial here. Monica at the Happy Zombie has a tutorial here.

Another interesting approach is to bring the backing fabric to the front between the QAYG blocks and use it as a sashing. There is a video by Penny Halgren showing this method here. This tutorial from Mary Ann at Rocknquilts, explains how to join the batting with an iron-on tape specially designed for batting. This idea is intriguing, but we are not certain that it would work easily in a tight spot and it requires you to purchase the special iron-on tape.

Marci and I wanted a slightly different result. We wanted:

a clean join on the front seam without adding any kind of design element to the front or the back of the quilt,
the batting securely joined so it would not shift into a lump,
as little hand sewing as possible,
no bulky seam from sewing the front and the batting together,
the quilting to show on the back of the quilt.

So we got into a discussion, exchanged ideas and made some impossible suggestions. That puzzle led us to think harder and come up with the method we are sharing here. Although we are both sure others have solved this problem in the same way, it was not something we had read or heard about before. We both made a small sample quilt to test this approach and we washed and dried the samples. So far, so good.

Here is our approach:

Front and Back of Quilt Blocks

Quilt your blocks with the backing fabric in place. Make sure your back fabric and batting are larger than the front block. This gives you something to hang onto while you quilt and the extra for the joining of the blocks later. Leave about 1 inch unquilted at the edges of the front fabric.

Align the two blocks and place them right sides together. Fold and pin the batting and backing fabric out of the way. If your fronts are out of line, trim them. Stitch your front fabric, right sides together with a 1/4 inch seam.

Press open the front seam. Be careful to use a heat setting on your iron suitable for your batting.

With the back of the blocks facing you, lay the piece flat and pin back the backing fabric. Carefully trim the batting with scissors so that when it is lying flat both sides of the batting touch but do not overlap. Perfection is not required here, batting is forgiving.

Fold the blocks, right sides together. Push the seamed front fabrics into the fold and pin them out of the way. Pin the batting together.

Sew the batting together using a blanket stitch ( _l_l_l_l_ ) or a short zig zag ( vvvvvv ). Stitch slowly so that the needle goes into the two pieces of batting on one side and goes over the edge of the batting into nothing on the other side.

When you are done, open the seam and smooth the batting or give it a very gentle tug to flatten it out. The idea is similar to a flatlock that you can do with a serger. You may want to test this out on some scrap pieces of batting to get the best size of stitch to achieve this with your sewing machine.

The goal is to secure the pieces of batting together without creating an overlap or lumpy seam.

The last step matches some of the tutorials mentioned earlier. Trim the backing fabric if needed so that the pieces overlap about 1/2 inch when smoothed out. On one side, fold and iron under 1/4 inch of backing fabric. You may want to hang one side over the ironing board to make this easier. Then place the back fabric with the turned-under side on top, smooth, pin and hand sew it in place. The photo below shows this sample after it was finished, washed and dried.

Repeat for all your blocks, horizontally row by row and then vertically row by row.

We are going to use this method on our huge Dresden blocks from Lily's Quilts QAL. If you decide to give this a try, let us know how it works out.

Best,

Leanne and Marci

Washed and Dried Sample

Thanks so much to Lynne for having us today! A huge Thanks to Leanne for all the hard work! I have so enjoyed working with you on this three country collaboration! It is amazing to me that a gal from Louisiana, Britain and Canada can work together (without ever having met) to come up with something so useful! Thanks ladies, it has been fun!

Comments

Leanne link

04/19/2011 08:42

Marci, thank you for this collaboration! It is wonderful to make a new friend and to share ideas.

Debbie link

04/20/2011 05:37

Great tutorial! Thanks!

Ellie

05/20/2011 04:11

Hello!
I have made a king size log cabin quilt in 2 pieces because one piece would not fit through my machine. I planned to join it as you show here.
My problem is I didn't leave 1" to join the halves!
Ay ideas to help me?
Hugs, Ellie

Jenn

06/09/2011 05:17

Hooray!Proof that you can join quilted blocks or sections together without sashing or lumps and bumps. I've been thinking about this for ages, because I designed a 2 block quilt for my inlaws 50th anniversary. It's a signature quilt, so it needs custom quilting, not just an allover design. This will let me quilt it in thirds, easily manageable on my domestic machine. Thanks!

Cyrielle LEMEUNIER link

07/17/2011 05:08

Merci pour ce super TUTO ! J'ai enfin compris comment il faut faire !

Thanks a lot for this TUTO. I understand how I've to do !

Becky

11/22/2011 21:58

Excellent solution for all three layers. I certainly appreciate the post.

Betty Grove

03/02/2012 07:42

I just finished a queen size bed quilt using QYAG with sashing connectors. It worked out quite nicely as I can't imagine doing the quilting the conventional way on my standard machine. Thank you so much for this tutorial, it will help with my next big project.

Jan

03/04/2012 17:19

you make this look easy, can't wait to try it! thank you!

Elizabeth

03/18/2012 09:55

I am working on a quilt using a method similar to this but I completely quilt the first chunk without leaving the unquilted margin. I then sew the unquilted 1" margin (top layer only) of the second chunk through all three layers of the first chunk trim the batting to match and fold under the backing and hand sew.
I am working in chunks of 3 x 3 blocks (30"x30") which I do not prewash. I use lightweight fusible interfacing cut in very narrow strips to "glue the batting together. It is way cheaper than the stuff on a roll and you can cut it skinnier. Also, because I will have 9 chunks to assemble when I am done, it was important to remember to leave the one inch unquilted margin on two sides of the four outside corner pieces. I'm not explaining it well but the center row is finished much as you describe but the rows on the sides have to have the right center seam on the left side unquilted and the left center seam on the right side unquilted. So the way I do it, the outside corner chunks have two unquilted edges before joining. The first unquilted edge joins to the left center and the right center chunk, and the second unquilted edge joins the finished center strip.

Kathryn

06/02/2012 08:34

This is fabulous! Thank you! I would like to add something that may help with abutting the batting perfectly. Carpet installers lay 2 adjoining rooms of carpet separately but let them overlap loosely where the 2 pieces meet. (usually a doorway) Then they use a razor knife to cut through both pieces at once. When the extra is removed from both pieces, the cut edges will align perfectly because they are made with the same cut! Hope this makes sense.

HotPinkThread link

09/20/2012 09:29

Thanks so much for this tutorial. I had figured out the front stitching and the back hand sewing, but could not figure out how to keep the batting from buckling in betweek. I am making my first king sized quilt, and this will make my process so much better.

Lori link

01/19/2013 17:42

THANK YOU! This is the clearest tutorial I've been able to find so far!

Jane Grendon

01/21/2013 07:43

I really agree with Lori It was the last in a long line of Q as you Go and is SO clear. Thank you

Stacey in Stitches link

02/17/2013 13:12

I have been wanting to try QAYG for a while now, but I could never wrap my hear around the finishing. I love the look of this and hand sewing is fun for me, so yay! Thank you for the great tutorial!

Debbie H

03/24/2013 11:36

Love this. Making my first quilt and wanted to do a quilt as you go but this is the first tutorial that made sense to me. QUESTION: How do you bind around the edges of the quilt?

superiorpaper.net link

06/12/2013 23:15

It wont be long until the festive season is upon us. You have provided me with much needed inspiration, thank you.