Hi Everyone! Welcome to the Sewing The Mini Holiday Quilt! With all the Tilda fabrics floating around, I couldn't resist sewing a cozy mini quilt for the holidays! December is a busy month, I'm hoping this project provides a bit of time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the holiday season.
We have two pre-cut kits available (but potentially sold-out). If you've purchased one, you will be ready to go and can skip over the prep stages. If you're thinking about using Tilda fabrics, but didn't get a mini quilt kit, there are still plenty of options for you! The Creating Memories Bundles, from any of the color ways, will work perfectly for everything except the backing. If you've purchased one previously or plan to get one of the new Winter color ways - that's great! You can look at the Pixie Cuts section to see if we have any additional coordinating prints available by the yard to create your own kit.
We will work to add a few more combination "Cinnamon Roll" pre-cuts too! These strips work great for this project and can also work for the Patchwork jeans featured in the Back To School course!
This week we kick things off with a more detailed look at the pattern and begin to sew our quilts - yay! If you haven't downloaded the Tropical Illusion doll size quilt pattern and gathered up all your supplies.
Follow along in the video as I show you how to work through Part 1, cutting and sewing the strips. For this part, you will first need to choose the version you are making. The tutorial will walk you through sewing the intermediate version, so it might be best if you choose to do that one first :) The "intermediate" reference is regarding the piecing of the triangles, not the sewing. Being that we have the video to guide you, the intermediate version shouldn't seem too difficult even if you are a beginner, like me!
Week One Task:
- If you haven't done this yet... Download the pattern. Read over the instructions to familiarize yourself with the process. Take some time to play around with color combinations and fabric choices.
- Watch the video.
- If you plan to have your doll quilt be washable, prewash and dry your fabrics first.
- Print out the layout diagram and use it to decide what fabrics will be assigned to numbers 1-4.
- Create a chart with fabric swatches to make the strip sewing much easier!
- Cut all your strips. Six one inch strips of each of the four fabrics, then two 1.5" strips for #3 and two additional 1" strips plus two 2" strips of fabric 4. The strips are cut on the full width of the yardage (42 - 44 inches wide), this will work fine for metric as well, there is room in the measurement for some extra length.
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Optional Note: If you want to use fat quarters, you'd just need to double the amounts (cut 12 strips instead of 6), you don't need to piece them together because we will cut them into 4.5" blocks. I haven't tried this, but I believe it should work fine for the blocks, but the borders might need piecing.
- Choose your backing fabric and cut that out as well. For our quilt, we've used fabric #4 as our backing fabric.
- Set your strips in order and begin sewing them together. Press the seams to set them and then press the seam allowances to one side as you sew the 8 strips together.
- Repeat two more times to create three strips that measure 4.5" wide.
- Phew! That's a lot of sewing! Now it's time to take a little break...
- Jump over the SWC Facebook Group for conversation and project sharing.
Next Tuesday - Part 2: Time to cut the blocks, and triangles and piece together our quilt top!
Overview of the two variations and supplies needed:
Gather up all the supplies and fabric needed for the Tropical Illusion Quilt project.
Main Version Fabrics Needed:
- 4 Colors of coordinating quilting fabric as follows
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1⁄4 yd. Green (#1)*
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1⁄4 yd. Brown (#2)*
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3⁄8 yd. Blue (#3)*
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1⁄2 yd. Purple (#4)*
- 5⁄8 yd. Backing Fabric
Version 2 Fabrics Needed:
- 4 Colors of coordinating quilting fabrics as follows
- 1⁄4 yd. Tan (#1)*
- 1⁄2 yd. Pink (#2)*
- 1 yd. Dk. Gray (#3)*
- 1⁄2 yd. Lt. Gray (#4)*
Supplies Needed for both versions:
- Safety Pins
- Straight Pins
- Thread
- Batting 18” x 24” (cotton batting may be used or 2 layers of flannel will give a more flexible feel to the finished quilt.)
Tools needed:
- Rotary Cutter
- Acrylic Ruler
- Cutting Mat
- Iron & Ironing Board
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