Make Life Square Baby Quilt Top Tut

You may recall my BFF Kirsten posting on my blog a few months (?) back about the basics of quilting. A lot of you commented that you had never done a quilt, but would like to! Well, as I was finishing up my Make Life baby quilt top, I thought to myself, "This is a great quilt for a beginner. It is simple, colorful, and can be easily quilted with a regular sewing machine foot. Why not show how I did it for those thinking about dipping their toes into the world of quilting?" So I took some pictures :).

Begin with your basic quilting materials: A Cutting Mat, Rotary Cutter, Ruler, and... fabric! I had already used up my first charm pack I won from Sew Dang Cute, so pictured is the second pack. You will also need 3/4 yards white sashing fabric... or whatever color you want. I am a big fan of white. For the picture, I had already cut my white sashing fabric into the necessary 1 1/2" strips. Leave 10 strips untouched, and the remaining strips cut into 5" pieces.


Arrange your charm pack pieces into 7 rows x 7 columns. Place the 5" sashing pieces between the charm pack pieces in each of the 7 rows.


Sew the charm pack pieces to the sashing pieces. Iron seams toward the charm pack.


Now that a row is done, add a long sashing piece to the charm row. Make sure you either cut off the selvedge of your sashing first, or start sewing a few inches down the sashing piece, like I did. See? Bottom left?


Now keep going! Sew the charm row to the sashing row, then to the charm row, then the sashing row, etc. In order to keep your sashing nice and even, carefully line it up with the piece above. I place my pieces right sides together as if I were about to sew it, and then fold it back a little to peek and see if the seams are lining up ok. Then I pin it to make sure it doesn't wiggle around! Always make sure your charms on the edges line up nicely too, that way the quilt will stay nice and square.

When all the rows are nicely sewn together, Iron all the seams towards the charm pieces. You can press the seams open to avoid too much fabric in one spot, but I'll be honest, pressing seams open with a 1/4" seam allowance is soooo frustrating for me.

Now add sashing to the top and bottom of the quilt, iron those seams, and add sashing to the sides. Iron your seams, and you are done!

The next step would be to iron it all nice and flat, make a quilt sandwich, quilt, and then bind... but we're just working on the quilt top today :).

So, you newbies... which I can probably classify myself as a newbie, but oh well... do you think you can do it? Go ahead, try it! The best part is, charm packs are easy to find on places like etsy, and often on sale. It ends up being a pretty inexpensive quilt! Let me know if you try it!

**Updated: I figured someone might want to see this thing all finished!  Here it is!

You can find printable, less picture-friendly but still brightly colored instructions for this quilt top here.