Quilt Top Assembly and Quilting Ideas

Welcome to week 4 of the scrap basket quilt along! I think it's a good thing I'm hosting a quilt along this month, or I don't know if I'd be doing much quilting at all! :)

Today we will be talking about assembling quilt tops and I'll share a few quilting ideas, too.

Take the 99 blocks you made last week and arrange them into rows 9 across by 11 down.

Alternate the direction of the blocks to form a rail fence layout. I take photos as I go along....just to keep tabs on how things are progressing.

At one point as I was arranging blocks I realized that my blocks looked quite similar to the state of Minnesota....

...so I added one more block to the top to finish it off. It made my kids (and me) chuckle. My husband said I should sew it up just like this! Ha! Maybe next time...

This was my initial layout. Nearly all the gray diamond fabrics were in the top half of the quilt, so I did a little bit of shuffling. I try not to mess with the layout TOO much, because you can get in over your head and end up rearranging ALL day long. I've done that once or twice!

This is my final layout. Sometimes a few simple tweaks help a lot!

In each row, I pressed my seams in the direction of least resistance. (See arrows above.) You could press the seams in rows 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. to the right and press the seams in rows 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. to the left. It doesn't really matter how you press, as long as the seams that are meeting nest.

When I sew the rows together, I like to work from the bottom up. I press the horizontal seams toward the top. I've found that this is the easiest way to manage the bulk of the quilt as it grows in size.

This quilt top came together quickly! Once all the rows are together, press the quilt top well. Take a photo (or twelve) if you like! :)

To quilt, I'd recommend a simple wavy line grid. No marking required, just eyeball the quilting line in the center of the patchwork. This can be done with a walking foot OR you can free motion quilt the lines. (I prefer to FMQ...less puckering where the lines of quilting intersect.)

The wavy grid produces a nice texture and it is just the right amount of quilting. Again, it goes QUICK! Gotta love that!

On the rockets and robots quilt I did an all over stipple. Or you could do loop-de-loops, which would be quick and fun, too! I used colored threads on both the quilts...these quilts will be going to kids, so the way I see it, the more color the better! Don't be afraid to branch out with different thread colors. It's fun!

Alright! That's all I've got for today! Next week I will have a little link up party so you can show your progress-or your finished quilt! Thanks to all of you who are joining me to make quilts for charity. I really appreciate it!

Happy Monday to you!