If you’ve been following along with the Easy Block Quilt Series, you should already have your nine quilt blocks assembled. The next step is to create your quilt top by adding sashing {those rows and columns between the quilt blocks} and borders.
Materials
1 1/2 yards of plain white fabric
rotary cutter/cutting mat
pins
sewing machine and tools
iron and ironing board
quilting rulers
Cuts
6- 2.5″x 15″white strips {small strips}
12-2.5″ x 57″ white strips {large strips}
I’m a big fan of solid colors for sashing and borders on quilts. I like a crisp, fresh look, and I believe a good solid color totally accomplishes that. In this case, I decided to go with white, but you choose based on the color scheme you’ve got going for your quilt. I also recommend choosing a fabric that was not used in your quilt blocks, especially for this quilt.
Here’s where my written descriptions are going to have to come in handy because this eager beaver didn’t take a whole lot of photos during the process. To start you’ll need to cut your fabric. Each quilt block you’ve already assembled should be 15″ square. You’ll need 6 pieces of 2.5″x 15″ strips for the sashing between each block on a row. You’ll also need 12 pieces of 2.5″ x 57″ strips to complete the sashing between each row and the border pieces.
To create the rows, you’ll sew a small strip to a quilt block. I used pins for this step to ensure a straight line!
You’ll then continue to sew the row. It should be three quilt blocks total with two smaller sashing strips in between. Iron the row once you’ve assembled it.
Do this twice more, creating three rows total. Iron in between assembling each row. By this point you should have used up all of your quilt blocks and all of your small sashing strips. Next you’ll assemble the three rows together.
Once all three of your quilt block rows are sewn together with sashing between rows and columns, it will look something like this…
You’ll then assemble the borders by pinning and sewing the larger white strips around the outer edge of the quilt top. Once every piece of sashing and border is sewn to your quilt top, give it one final ironing and trim around the edges making sure it’s square.
Your quilt top is completely finished now!
Next up, we’ll talk about options for the back of the quilt. Stay tuned.
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