Quilt as you Go

Have you ever wondered what to do with your leftover scraps or smaller pieces of fabrics for that matter? As we all know our pile of scraps can grow overnight. Really it does!! *laugh* If you're like me, you cannot help yourselves but feel guilty for scraps that are wasted in a basket. If that's the case, then maybe the only solution is to be more aggressive and sew them into blocks. This is one alternative I'm suggesting: A Quilt as you Go.

 Our guild facilitated a workshop on how to make a simple Quilt as you Go. We used pre-cuts blocks and spread them over two tables and sorted them out by themes or colours. We decided to used our guild fabric to make community quilts with them this time, but you can use yours as well. Everyone choose 20 blocks and the pattern differed too. There are varieties of ways to sew your top. Mine has animals/horses that as one direction pattern, so my main block was set straight in the middle and not in an angle as others did.

I centred my block and sandwiched it with batting and backing. Because they were all the same size, I cut the length of my strips of 9" by the width by 2 1/2".

Each block was individually Quilted as you Go. Then I re-squared them because they shifted slightly. My blocks alternated in two colours and set them in rows of 4 x 5.

  To sew the blocks together, I needed strips of 1" strips, which will be used for the back and strips
of  2", which will be used for the front.  The 2" strips were pressed in half.  The block and the strips are all aligned and sewed together with a perfect 1/4" seam allowance; otherwise, the seams won't butt together when you opened it flat.

 This is what it would look in the back.

   I used the same size 2" strips for the binding, but I found it to tight at some places when I quilted the binding in the front. In the beginning, I left about 12" of binding loose and did the same with the end, leaving a gap to facilitate the sewing of the two separated pieces of binding together.

 This is how I make my corners. I stopped 1/4" from the edge, tack, and sewed right out.

 Then turned the binding to my right, forming a perfect 90-degree angle.

 And come back, refolding the binding over that 90-degree angle. All nicely flat. Turn your quilt and continued sewing the binding. I did that for all the corners.

I laid the binding flat on top of each other and tugged gently making sure it tight and not loose, then pinned right in the crease of the binding. Anywhere in that middle of the overlapping binding is fine.

   After that I took the third pin and passed it through the fold of the binding, making sure the other two pins aligned.

   When my two pieces were aligned, it formed a perfect 90-degree angle. From one corner to the other, I marked it. (In this picture I marked it the wrong way. It should be from the right to left corner.) Do not cut the extra until you made sure your binding isn't twisted or sewed on the wrong diagonal.

 After I checked, I cut the extra binding to a 1/4 seam allowance.

 A trick Leah Day said to do, which I tried and was wonderful, is to hand-sew you corners in place before sewing the binding with the machine. As I mentioned earlier, my 2" binding was very small and really appreciated the fact I didn't have to deal with the corners.

 This is the finish Quilt as you Go

My dog couldn't wait to try it out. To bad it's for a community organization :)