a little quilt tutorial

 When I first started blogging in early 2012, I would write about everything I made as soon as I made it -  sometimes even putting two or more projects in one post.  But then came the summer and I wasn't sewing as often and realized that although I wanted to keep posting, I didn't have any content because everything I made was already on here.   

  

It was then that I realized, what many of you already had figured out, that I should blog about only one project (or topic) at a time and save some things to write about during the slower sewing months or sewing slumps.  Well, now I have quite a few projects that I made several months ago that I haven't shared here including this little doll quilt. 

It was a simple little project and it is probably pretty obvious how I pieced it but I thought I would write up a quick little explanation/tutorial anyway - if anyone is interested.

Basically you start by just fussy cutting a few cute fabrics (these are from Sarah Jane Children at Play and measure about 4" x 4".)   If your fussy cuts are different sizes (like mine were), just add some of the solid background fabric to the smaller ones so that they all measure the same.  Piece together the fussy cuts with strips of the background fabric until it measures your desired width and press the seams. 

My row finished at about 24" so I used that measurement as the width for the rest of my fabrics.  Cut some strips 24" wide x varying heights of both your background fabric and of some cute prints.  You'll need 2 extra strips of the background fabric.  You can figure out what you want the finish size to be before cutting so that you'll know what size strips to cut but what I did was sew the strips of background fabric to the top and bottom of the fussy cut row and then alternated cutting a strip of print fabric and a strip of background and sewing them to the fussy cut section until I was happy with the size.  This works especially well if you are taking the print fabrics from your scraps - as you can just use whatever size you have.

Quilt it, add some binding, and you'll have a little quilt perfect for gifting!

And here is a sneak of another project from earlier this summer that I'll write about soon.