Friday 2 November 2012

A Zig Zag Quilt for Ivan ....

Last weekend my Granddaughter Fieron and I had a 'girl's day in'.
We did 'whatever' we wanted to do.

That included a bit of piecing, a bit of eating, we watched Mama Mia twice through and made friendship bracelets.

We needed to make a quilt for Baby Ivan and had it nearly all pieced together on the day including our other activities so we didn't do too badly did we.

Fieron and I thought you may like to follow along or make a 'Zig Zag' quilt yourself so between us we had fun taking photos of the various steps so you can give it a try yourself, so here we go.

A Zig Zag Quilt for Ivan
Finished size 48 x 56 inches
Fabrics and cutting directions
1. From a variety of blue fabrics (we used 5 fat quarters) cut 60 X 5 inch squares, you could also use Charm packs.

Zig Zag Quilt


From background fabric (we used 2 1/2 yards white) cut 4 x 2 1/4 strips for binding, cut 4 x 4 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches for added borders. Cut  60 X 5 inch squares.

Zig Zag Quilt

2. With a ruler mark a diagonal line on all of the plain squares, we used Frixion pens but a pencil or biro also works as this will not be seen.


Zig Zag Quilt

3. Place a blue square and white square right sides together using the 1/4 inch foot on your machine as a guide stitch a scant 1/4 inch either side of the drawn line.
Zig Zag Quilt



4. Using a rotary cutter and ruler cut along the drawn line on all of the white squares. This gives you 2 sets of half square triangles (hst).

Zig Zag Quilt


5. Press to set the stitches, then slide your iron between the fabrics , let the iron slowly do the work to open up the fabrics and press open the seam without any little folds, it needs to be smooth.


Zig Zag Quilt

6. This step can be a little tedious, we need to square up or true the hst blocks. Use a square up ruler with a diagonal line to square up the blocks to 4 1/2 inches, this is an important step as it gives a more finished look to the rest of the piecing.

Zig Zag Quilt


7. Now for the fun part, playing with your design....Fieron laid out the blocks on the design wall.

Zig Zag Quilt



Zig Zag Quilt

8.  Stitch two blocks together, press the seam allowance in opposing directions.  This will help your blocks 'marry together' in the next step.



9 . Stitch two columns together with the seams allowances in opposing direction marrying the seams together.
Continue to stitch side by side columns together in two's then into fours etc until all of your columns are added.

Zig Zag Quilt



10. Using 2 x 4 1/2 x 48 1/2 borders, first add the side borders, use pins and ease in any fullness so both borders are the same length, then add the top and bottom borders.



Zig Zag Quilt


A bigger quilt could be made starting with 60 x 6 1/2" squares in blues and 60 x 6 1/2 inch squares in white, without borders this would give a quilt measuring 60 x 72 inches.

11. Quilt as desired...lol....We need this quilt for a gift so will be quilting very soon, so watch this space!

You can see this quilt top finished and quilted here


6 comments:

  1. Kay, that sounds like a truly wonderful day.

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  2. that's a great quilt! I love the blues and thanks for the tutorial!!

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  3. lovely quilt, thanks for sharing the pattern. no doubt you will quilt this beautifully.

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  4. Looks like Grandma did all the work and Fieron had fun with the camera! It's a lovely quilt, and thank you both for the tutorial.

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  5. super quilt - a good way to use up stray fat quarters!

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  6. This is beautiful. I love the zig zag design.

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