Quilting advice please!?

Question

I'd like to make a quilt like this: http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c134/kiko_kamia/quiltplan.jpg

I'm planning on making it 7x8 feet, with 4 inch squares and I'll allow for half inch seams (so I'll be cutting out 5 inch squares).

I'm planning on cheating a bit by using a flat sheet for the back.

With the way everything is looking right now, I'll need 253 light blue , 55 red, 49 orange, 43 yellow, 37 green, 31 blue, 25 purple, and 11 ivory blocks.

What I'd like to know is a) do you have any advice on how to make this work best and b) any idea how many yards of each type of fabric I'm going to need to buy?

Thank you for any help in advance!

Answer 1

1/4" seams are more standard for quilts -- I do use half inch on baby quilts that are meant to be dragged around, though.

I would suggest that you might want to try strip quilting techniques instead of making 11 jillion squares and then sewing them back together again.

Let's take the first three columns of your quilt and "do" those:

#1: 24x4" = 96" strip of blue.  Add 1/2" all around, so cut this strip 97" x 5"

#2: 5x4" = 20" of blue, + 1/2" all around = 21"x5" piece

plus: 17x4" = 68" of red, + 1/2" all around = 69"x5" red

plus: 2x4" of blue = 8" of blue  + 1/2" all around = 9"x5" blue

#3: 4x4" = 16" of blue " 1/2" all around = 17x5" blue

plus: 2x 4" = 8" of red + 1/2" all around = 9"x5" red

plus: 15x4" =60" of red + 1/2" all around = 61"x5" red

plus: 3x4" = 12" of blue " 1/2" all around = 13x5" blue

etc.

There is a quick quilting technique that would be perfect for this sort of quilt -- it's often used for making serger quilts, but works fine on a sewing machine.  Once you've got the columns sewn together, you'll cut strips of backing and batting  5" wide, and you'll sew the quilt together, with the backing and batting in place, one strip at a time.  Here's how it's done:

http://www.quilterscache.com/H/howtoquil...

except yours will be long strips rather than square blocks.

Then, when it's all together and bound, you can, if you like, add some additional quilting -- I think a vine motif down the center of each column might be amazing.

As far as amounts of fabric, if you cut separate blocks, and

we assume 40" wide useable fabric, we can cut 8 blocks per row:

light blue: 253 blocks / 8 = 32 widths x 5" = 160" = 4.4 yards; add a bit more for mistakes and I'd buy 5 yards

55 red: 7 widths * 5" = 35" + mistakes =1.25 yards

49 orange -- I'd buy 1.25 yards also

43 yellow --  1 1/8 yards

37 green -- also 1 1/8  yards

31 dark blue: 7/8  yards

25 purple -- 7/8 yards

11 ivory -- 1/2 yard

The yardage for the method I'm proposing would be less, and I'd be happy to calculate it for you if you're interested.