Easiest Strip Quilt for DOLLS-Part 1-Prep

I’m so excited to share this post mainly since I have wanted to make a quilt of sorts for a long time. I finally had the excuse to make one with RILEY BLAKE FABRICS  and for even more fun, check out the Riley Blake Fabric Fest in Las Vegas, NV in September where we will be teaching a class. Anyhow, Riley Blake has THE CUTEST selection of fabrics so it was hard to pick. It’s a good thing I picked the quilt that requires many colors and patterns because I got to use most of my very favorites.

One of my dear friends has a quilting professional friend named NUBBIN that so kindly, sat down with me for almost a whole day and taught me the basics of quilting. I’ve tried quilting before and to be honest, you really have to know the tricks or your sunk. There are a lot of things you can fudge in the DIY world, but not quilting. I’m so excited to share with you what she taught me and showcase these fabrics that I wanted to almost EAT when I got them. These are the fabrics I chose. This is the only way I thought of to showcase my choices.

To start, choose a quarter of a yard from twenty different fabrics with varying shades. I would say the ratio was 2/3 darker and 1/3 lighter. Easy enough right? Cut them into 1 1/2″ wide strips and cut them however long the piece was. I didn’t cut the length individually until I was sewing since I wanted to completely randomize the colors as I went. If I had an exact color patter, I would have cut them prior to sewing. This process took me about 3 hours. I cut tons of extras so I could make a matching quilt for Q’s bed. It’s so much easier to do it all in one sitting than to spread it out. It’s SUPER IMPORTANT to cut your strips evenly. If you don’t know how to do this, you will find a great tutorial HERE. I have to say thank you to my special niece Sabrina who was my iron lady for this project. We chatted and chatted and she ironed almost every piece on this quilt! Thanks Sabrina!

***TIP*** One of the great NUBBIN tips is that you keep all your fabric strips organized neatly in a tote so when you need to put things away, your fabric doesn’t get folded, scrunched and stretched out of proportion.

Here are the basic supplies to make a strip quilt. I got this design from the July issue of Quilter’s Magazine and fell in love with the star design from the moment I saw it. I took that design and modified it from a queen-sized quilt to make a doll-sized quilt. It’s best to draw out your design and figure out exactly how many squares you need of each color combo. I needed to end up with (12) solid blocks, (4) light blocks, and (8) half and half blocks to equal (24) blocks.

• If you aren’t sure what size to make your quilt, find another one that seems like the right size, measure it, and plan your design accordingly.
• It came in handy to use the Omnigrid Mat/Ironing surface combo board. It was great to be able to cut and iron back and forth with ease.
• You can either use a paper of muslin fabric base. I chose to use fabric. Fabric stays in your design and paper is removed after your block is constructed. I also used this square quilting ruler so I could make sure each block was exactly square while trimming.

Watch for the other parts of the tutorial this week that will include the assembly of the blocks, constructing of the top layer of quilt, binding and finishing. I can’t wait to share the rest with you!!! FIND PART 2 HERE!

Happy Sewing!!!

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