Hello Quilty Friends!
Happy Thursday to you!
I hope you are all staying warm and cozy, holed up in your sewing room making beautiful quilts! I am happy to say that I’ve been able to get some quilting in since the beginning of the year and thought I’d share a fun tutorial for a terrific small quilt, perfect as a baby quilt.
But before I get started with the actual tutorial, let me share a little bit about one of my favorite things about my job in the quilt industry. I actually wear many hats (don’t we all?) and one of the coolest ones is making sample quilts for fabric companies. Recently I whipped up this adorable Corners quilt featuring the Love and Learning collection by Hoffman. It’s a really sweet collection featuring a charming alphabet panel in your choice of light or dark background. I saw that darling collection and immediately thought it would look great in Molly Cook’s Corners Rose Card pattern.
Here is what the quilt looked like as a digital image before I actually made it:
Don’t you just love it? Yes, it has a little bit of pink in it, but don’t you think it would work for a boy or a girl? I do!
Anyway, I made a sample of this quilt for Hoffman and as I made it, I photographed the steps so I could create a new tutorial for the blog just for you, our loyal readers.
Do you have Molly’s Corners pattern yet? If not, you can get it as a physical pattern HERE or as a digital pattern HERE.
Let’s get started on our first quilt tutorial for 2024! Yay!
VRD Corners Quilt Tutorial
So the first thing you need to do is gather up your fabrics and your pattern. The first image shows the alphabet panel, the second image is the background and coordinates, and the last photo shows the binding, backing, and accent fabrics. Oh what fun!
After you’ve got your supplies together, then it’s time to cut each alphabet letter out of the panel one at a time. I don’t know if you can see in the first photo above, but each letter includes an item that begins with the specific letter as well as the item’s name.
Time to cut! I used a square ruler the size of the square called for in the pattern (or at least I thought I was). That way all I had to do was center each design and cut around all four sides of the ruler. Unfortunately the letters in the last row of the panel were wider than the rest and I ended up having to cut some of the designs a bit, but made sure the letter was not cut off.
OOPS! Then I realized my ruler wasn’t the right size. Luckily it was a bit bigger, so I could trim those squares down to the correct size.
Whew! Done with trimming down 26 squares. That took me a little while. Make sure you cut your squares to the correct size the first time!
Moving on……….
Next it’s time cut a bunch of strips and sew them together before we cut the units for the half frames. Sewing long strips together is not one of my personal favorite things to do. What’s your least favorite part of quilting?
Okay, the strips are sewn into pairs with a background strip sewn to a colored strip. Next let’s cut all of the units out of the strip sets. To create the corner unit for the block, you will have to sew a rectangle to the squares as in the second photo.
All right, now the hard part — to achieve the same layout as Molly’s sample quilt on the front of the pattern (see above), we will be making 4 versions of the same block.
For most of you, this won’t seem like a big deal, but there will be a few quilters who have trouble getting the right block orientation. Well, I am included in this group, definitely. Blame it on being a lefty for me.
I strongly urge you to use some kind of flannel board. Make one block at a time and place them in their proper order on your flannel board so you can more easily see the orientation of each block as you sew them together.
I did try sewing a group of blocks together using my usual speed sewing method, but that ended up being a disaster. I had to do a lot of ripping out and rearranging the pieces of my blocks. So, after that, I made one block at a time.
Once I had all my blocks up on my flannel board and double checked their orientation, I started sewing the blocks into rows and then sewed the rows together into the quilt center. I was holding my breath the whole time………
Once I knew I had conquered the center, it was time to add borders. I added the side borders first and then sewed the top and bottom borders on last.
Woohoo! The top is done! Time to layer, machine quilt, do binding, and add a label. Oh! My last thing to do will be shipping the quilt to where it needs to go. It will come back eventually…………
Have you made the Corners quilt before? Do you have any tips to share?
Update on Decluttering
Before I go, I wanted to give a little update on my decluttering project. I started with my cutting table first. Lately it’s been more of a storage surface than a cutting surface.
Holy moly! I found several groupings of fabrics paired with patterns as well as yardage and stacks of fat quarters. Some loose patterns, too. Ugh! Now I have to put the fabrics away and figure out where to house the projects. Decisions, decisions! This is why I avoid decluttering — I have way too much stuff and not enough space.
I need to start pulling stuff out I don’t love anymore and finding it all new homes. Time to start purging my stash or I will never ever find an organization system that works for me because you can only stack so many plastic crates. Well, I’m going to keep plugging away, so stop in next week to see what else I’ve accomplished.
Sew. Laugh. Purge. Repeat.
Always,
Tricia @ VRD
Villa Rosa Quilts 