Faux Chenille Blanket

 I have made a couple of these types of blankets and I love them. They are always so soft when they are finished. I love the way this one has turned out! I can definitely tell a big difference in the quality and accuracy of my sewing since the last time I made one. It is nice to see that I am improving!

If you would like this little beauty for your own, you can check out my etsy page (there's a link in the top bar just below the banner) and purchase it for yourself or someone special. If you would like a blanket like this but in different colors feel free to email me and I would love to work something out for you.

Simply Color Quilt Continued

 Making Blocks:

In this post I explained the first steps of this quilt. After cutting the squares out of the patterned fabric and out of the white background fabric. I paired a patterned square with a white square and put them right sides together. I marked with a pencil from one corner to the opposite corner .

 I then took all of my squares, that are marked, down to my sewing machine. With a 1/4" seam sew on each side of the marked line. To save time and thread I fed the squares in a chain.

 After I sewed down each side of the diagonal line, I cut on the pencil line through both fabrics. I prefer to do this with my shears but you can definitely do this with your rotary cutter.

 Look at all those lovely triangles waiting to be pressed!

 Next I press the seam to the patterned piece.

 Laying out the Pattern:

Now for the fun part! This is why I love half square triangle quilts so much, There are so many different ways you can put the triangles together. I went on pinterest and searched for different HST designs and tried them out. These are some of my favorites and I ended up liking the first one on the left the best.

Split Rail Fence Quilt: Part 3

 Finishing The Quilt Top

The other parts of this series can be found here: Part 1 and Part 2

After I finished sewing all of the blocks, I trimmed them to 13 inches square. When you are making your own make sure to measure your blocks to figure out what you should square them to. This is due to differences in sewing and pressing techniques. 

A jelly roll makes 12 blocks, so I decided to lay my quilt out in a 4 by 3 pattern. As I was laying out my quilt top and decided where each block should go I was keeping color composition and pattern in mind. After I was happy with the layout I took a picture so I could look back and reference it. 

I then sewed the blocks together into strips. I like to mark each row with a post-it note with its number. I had a total of 4 rows, each with 3 blocks in it.

After sewing the rows, I then sewed the rows together to make the quilt top. When I sew quilt rows together I like to put a pin at each intersection and then one pin in the center of the block. This makes sure that the rows are perfect and the intersections line up.

 

 Also I like to make my intersections "lock" so they line up perfectly. The way I do this is I press all of the seems on one row to the left and then on the other row I press all of the seems to the right. You can see this demonstrated in the picture above.  

And now for the finished quilt top!! What do you think??

Linked to:
Craft-o-maniac
Keeping it Simple

Riley Blake's Willow Line

As a gift for our new baby my mom gave me a jelly roll of Riley Blake's line Willow. It is so cute! I am in love with the colors and the patterns. If you are not familiar with Riley Blake, you can check out her website here. Beware you might fall madly in love with everything and want to buy everything that she has! I know I want to sometimes.

Anyways the jelly roll that my mom gave me was included in a kit for a split rail fence quilt. It sounds complicated, I was a little intimidated at first by the quilt instructions, but I am here to tell you that it is really simple.

I will keep you updated with my progress with the quilt through out the week. Check back on Later as I complete more of the quilt! Enjoy