I love making quilts, I love the art and the frontier history of it. There are many different kind of quilts like, log cabin quilts, crazy quilts that you can decorate with lace, buttons or fringe, crumb quilts, wedding ring quilts and that’s just to name a few. So, I’m going to show you how to piece a quilt.
When you say quilting that actually refers to the process of putting together your quilt top, batting and backing by whatever quilting method you prefer either by hand or machine. Even though I will sometimes say quilting when I mean that I’m making the quilt top.
If you need help threading your machine, or help winding your bobbin check out my starting to stitch posts.
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Quilt tips
One of the things I’ve learned is that quilting seams are 1/4″ seams and that you need a 1/4″ quilting foot for your sewing machine to get your seams straight. Here is the 1/4″ quilting foot I use.
A charm pack is what I’m going to be using to show you how to piece a quilt, a charm pack is a bundle of 5″ squares. I love using precut fabric bundles for quilting like, jelly rolls, layer cakes and charm packs.
When buying fabric for a quilt make sure to get 100% cotton. Also, if you need to cut the fabric, I recommend using a rotary cutter, clear ruler and mat, using a rotary cutter helps you cut the fabric cleanly and quickly and also helps cut the fabric straight.
You may have heard to use cotton thread when making a quilt, I use polyester thread and that works great to me, but I do recommend not using any kind of cheap thread. Another thing you may have heard about is to prewash your fabric, I don’t prewash and I’ve never had any trouble, but it’s really just preference if you want to prewash or not.
When piecing a quilt you don’t backstitch, because the way you sew the blocks together keeps the quilt from unraveling, and I like to set the stitch length to 1.5 to create a nice secure seam.
Pressing is also very important when sewing a quilt, you can press your seams open or to the side, again it’s just your preference. In this tutorial I’m going to press my seams open.
On with the stitching
To show you how to piece a quilt I’m going to piece a nine patch quilt block, one of the simplest quilt blocks there is.
First lay your quilt block fabric out.
Take the first row and the two first fabric squares and place them right sides together and stitch the right edge.
I like to finger press my seams right now.
Then take the third piece of fabric of the first row, and place it right side facing to the second square and sew. Now you have the first row of the nine patch block.
Repeat these steps two more times to create two more rows. Now, I like to take all three rows to the ironing board and press the seam.
After you have stitched and pressed the three rows now it’s time to sew the rows together. Take the first two rows and pin them right sides together and sew. Making sure to remove the pins as you sew.
Take the last row and pin it to the second row and sew. Press the seams.
That’s all there is to piecing a quilt block, and you can use any color, or pattern of fabric when you quilt to create whatever kind of quilt you want.
