Well I have finally started to put my Splendid Sampler quilt together. I’ve been prevaricating a bit, partially because I’ve not done it before and having spent the last twelve months making the blocks, I don’t want to ruin it at the last stage.If I’m honest I’m also feeling a bit snowed under with our house decorating schedule, trying to organise workmen, together with trying to keep up with challenges I wanted to keep up with, like the monthly stitch challenge.
I’ve decided to forget about the challenges until after the decorating, concentrate on finishing my Splendid Sampler quilt, I’ve then promised my daughter Helen an elephant quilt…and I’ve a charity quilt to make for the end of May…then I’m going to catch up with lots of dressmaking!
I decided fairly early on in the Splendid Sampler journey to try quilt-as-you-go or QAYG as it’s known. I knew I wanted to quilt each block individually, according to the design, rather than doing an all over design like I’ve done before. There is no way I could do that on my domestic sewing machine, with a 75″ quilt I think I would struggle to quilt it anyway. With QAYG each block is sandwiched and quilted separately, then the blocks are joined together. There are a couple of ways to join them, but I decided to follow the tutorial on Tall Tales from Chiconia Kate’s instructions are excellent.
Once I had quilted my blocks I trimmed them all to 7.5″, my original plan was for 8″ blocks but as Kate stressed how important it was for all the blocks to be exactly the same size I decided to trim them a bit more.
I chose a soft teal colour for my sashing, I cut 1″ strips and with quarter inch seams either side, the blocks lay perfectly together.I used my walking foot and double-checked my quarter inch seam before hand. The underneath sashing is made with 1.5″ strips folded in half, I machine stitched one side at the same time as stitching the front strip on, and then hand-stitched the back down. If you’re confused, check out Kate Chiconia’s tutorial, she makes it very simple!
This is my progress so far, I’ve a couple of pairs and one set of four. I’m really pleased so far. I’ve decided not to stress over my sashing squares not meeting up squarely, if they do, great, if not, I’m chilled! I also think it will be easier to lay them out on the table in 16’s, decide on the arrangement before sewing them together and then moving on to the next sixteen, I can’t cope with trying to arrange 100 blocks at once!
One factor that has made arranging them a bit more tricky is my decision at the beginning to use a variety of floral cottons to back. A decision I’m still hot and cold on, but once I’d started I had to continue! In the end I’ve done half patterned and half plainish with the idea of chequer-boarding them. I never thought it would be so confusing trying to get the patterned and plain in the right place!! I got myself in a right muddle last night. It didn’t help that I hadn’t sussed out that as long as the design wasn’t directional, I could just turn the blocks the other way up!! Once I thought I’d stitched them the wrong way round, but actually they just needed turning! I had a bit of a brainwave today during my lunchbreak at work, I’m going to put a pin on all the patterned ones at the front, so I don’t need to keep turning them over!
I think now I’ve started it and got a bit of a system going, it shouldn’t take me too long, just 96 blocks to go…
Ohhh wow.. I am so impressed. I can not sew to save my life. But I love seeing beautiful work. Its gorgeous. =)
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Thank you, still a fair bit of work to do, but I’m winning!
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It will be beautiful! You are welcome =)
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This will be such a beautiful quilt! Can’t wait to see it all together!
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Thanks Kathy, hopefully it won’t take TOO long, now I’ve got going!
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I love your color choices.
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Thanks Bella, such soft colours are not my usual choice so it took a bit of self control!! I’m pleased with the way it’s turned out.
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Your quilting blocks are truly beautiful. You inspire me to do projects I’ve never tried or aspired to try before. Look forward to the finished project.
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Thanks Mary, I’ve learnt lots of new techniques doing this, so I definitely recommend it as a way of learning quilting
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That is really cute! I learned that QAYG is not for me – I was stressing myself out over that whole matching issue. But yours looks awesome! I just finished quilting all my Splendid Sampler blocks tonight and will work on the borders next. I hope to have the binding on sometime next week!
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Thank you, I think if I was doing it again I might not put the corner stones on, I think I have made things difficult for myself!
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are you going to have all 100 blocks together in the same quilt? or make several quilts?
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Hi Claire, I’m putting all the blocks in one quilt, so it will be 75″ square, it should fit ok on our king size bed. I know others have made 2 or 3 smaller quilts instead.
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wow that’s going to be one big quilt!!!
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What a fab idea – so much easier than trying to quilt a large area on a domestic machine. I have a quilt in the pipeline so am grateful for the tip thank you 😊
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Thanks, it’s going together nicely, the biggest quilt I can manage on my machine is a small double, and that’s with a very general allover pattern, I certainly couldn’t have done this quilt, or individually quilted each block, it’s worked well 🙂
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