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Thursday, March 10, 2011

One way to quilt squares

Several days ago I got a question from Jana in Prague. Again I say, how fun is blogging?? It is like having grown up pen pals from all over the world. Anyway, her question was what pattern to use for her son's quilt that was all squares. She mentioned Blues Crossing, one of the quilts from Scrap-Basket Sensations. Here's a close-up of the quilting. By following a very easy quilting diagram, the quilting looks like intersecting circles. It's very easy and very fun.
Here is a diagram of how to quilt this. I've started in the bottom left corner. You quilt an arc to the right to the next seam. From there you just "sway" back and forth from right to left always crossing at the seam lines. It takes a bit of practice to sway just the right amount from block to block, but in the end, no one really notices the slight variations.
When you get to the top, you pivot and sway back down the same seam line, going to the left and then the right (dotted line). When you reach the bottom, you repeat this until all the vertical rows are done. At the bottom right corner, you sway up and start the same thing for all the horizontal rows. This will bring you to the top right hand corner. At this point you stitch each outside block until your reach the starting place. It's as easy as that!! Click the pictures to enlarge them if needed.
I hope this helps, Jana. Good luck and I'd love to see the finished product.
Until next time,
-Karen

9 comments:

Sunnybec said...

Thank you so much for this tut. I am new to quilting and I have no problems piecing etc but when I get to the end and it says "quilt as desired" well....yes I would love to quilt it as I desire but how do I do that!?!?!? So my quilting has been stippling, loop the loop with a few hearts thrown in for good measure. This looks fairly easy (she says) I will definitely have a go at this. Thank you so much for taking the time to show us how to do it. Hugs Linda

Abby and Stephanie said...

I know everyone appreciates the tutorial. A really great way to quilt squares.

Unknown said...

Dear Karen, thank you so much for your time and great tutorial. I am happy that more ladies appreciate it. As I can see I am not the only one, who is sometimes lost with saying "quilt as desired".
Now I don´t have any excuse for not finishing my son´s quilt :-).
Have a great Spring,
Cheers from Jana in Prague, Czech Republic

Karen said...

I have done this quilting design before and found it works well and looks good.

Carol said...

Thanks so much Karen for directions on how to do this quilting. Can you show us sometime how to do feathers?

Becky said...

Thanks for showing us newbies how to do that design. You do make it sound easy and I'm going to give it a try.

antique quilter said...

I love quilting like this...
thanks for sharing your process
Kathie

Kim Brackett said...

I've gotta try this! The result is so pretty.

Anonymous said...

I love quilting this way...in fact, did more of it today. So easy of a pattern with great results!