Hi, I’m Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. As I’m traveling around the country,
I see a lot of quilts, and the ones I’m always drawn to are those beautiful antique
quilts and I was somewhere in Indiana when I happened to cross this beautiful antique
quilt and I decided that I would make a replica of it out of solids. A lot of the old quilts
were made with two colors and I just fell in love with it and fell in love with this
cheddar, so I thought I would replicate for this, this for you. Now, as I started looking
at it, I realized that it’s the exact same block as you use to make the “Jacob’s
Ladder.”
So you need a four patch and a half square triangle. Here they are, right here. Here’s
your four patch and here’s your half square triangle and it’s just how you lay them
out. So we’re going to go through the whole thing, start to finish, so that you can replicate
this yourself.
This quilt is about, let’s see, it’s, it’s sixty six by seventy-two. You know,
it’s, this is the size it is. It’s going to take about two yards of each color and
I have eighteen squares across and nineteen rows. So it’s almost square, just a little
bit different in size, but you can make it whatever size you want. And, because you’re
dealing with two colors, you know, you can use whatever you, what, you know, however
much you want as well.
So there’s lots of ways to make four patches and half square triangles and today I’m
just going to show you the way I did them with this, because I was working with charm
packs. I made the two blocks, so I made a four patch, like this, and half square triangle,
like this. So our half square triangle, we’re going to make it the old way and what I did
was, I took my white square and I ironed it in half diagonally, like this. This gives
me a sew line. It’s better, it’s faster than drawing the line. So, I’m going to
lay them, my white on top of my other one, and this is going to be the line that I set
my presser foot against. So, I’m going to be sewing a quarter of an inch out from either
side of my diagonal line.
So, we’ll go to the sewing machine and do that and I’m just going to set my presser
foot right along that edge and I’m just going to sew. When I get down here to the
bottom, I’m just going to whip it around and sew the other side. You can see I’m
using a grey thread so you can see that a little better. Then we just need to cut these
in half and you can use your rotary cutter or a scissor, whatever you’d like. I’m
just going to scissor cut these. Old school, little bit of old school right here. Sometimes
we need to remember where we came from, you know, haha. So we’re going to go over here
and iron these open and I’m going to put my darker color on the top and press back
and the same with both of these. So, out of that one cut we’re getting two of those.
So, now we need to make the four patches and, again, there’s loads of ways to make four
patches. We’re going to do it the scrappy four patch way because we’re dealing with
charm packs. If you have yardage, if you can’t find the color you want in a precut and you
want to use yardage, you could do this with strips as well, but we’re going to do the
scrappy four patch way. So, we’re going to have our two squares and we’re going
to sew right down the sides, like this and then cut that in half so we’re coming over
here to the sewing machine. So, straight down the side, that’s all you’re
going to do on both sides. So, we’re just going to turn this around and sew down the
other side and then I’m just going to cut this in half and we’re working with five inch squares
here, so I’m going to come in two and half inches from the edge, just like that, and
then we’ll press these open, right over here on the ironing board. Here we go. We’re
going to press that open and press this one open and then we’re going to...then what
I’m going to do, now if you’re doing the scrappy four patch, you’re going to sew
loads of these together, like this, and you’re going to cut them, every one.
Because we’re just dealing with two colors, what I can do is I can nest these up here
together, like this, and I’m just going to cut it in half again. Or, actually, you
know what we can do, I just thought of something even faster. I love it when that light bulb
moment goes on. So, now we can just sew down the sides again and cut the whole thing in
half. How cool is that? We had a light bulb moment right on camera. So we’re going to
make sure this is nesting nicely and this one, too, cause you want that middle seam
all nested up tight. Wow! This is cool, you guys, we just came up with a little bit quicker.
Haha, that’s pretty fun.
Then we’re going to cut it in half again, two and a half from the edge and ouila! We
have our four, our four patches. So ,that’s kind of cool. We’re going to iron those
nice and flat. So now the whole key with this quilt is the layout.
So, we’re just going to gather up our four patches and our half square triangles and
we are going to put them together and I’ve got my cheddar always going in the same direction.
Whenever I have a four patch I’m going to remember that this cheddar is in the top left
corner. Then these are the ones that switch, so every other row, these will be different.
So, we’re going to do one whole row where our cheddars to the, to the top square and,
and then this one faces down so they’re identical the whole row. This is what makes
this quilt really fun to put together because it’s just got such a bang for its buck.
It’s got a lot of pop.
So then next we’re going to start with ours, but it’s going to go the opposite direction.
So, the half square triangle now is going to point up. So, these are going to meet like
a little bow tie thing, but our, our four patch stays exactly the same. So, we’ve
got this one. We’ve got a row where the white ups and the next row where the cheddars
up and our four patches stay the same. So make sure this is right. There we go. And
let’s do one more row just so you can see how this is going to go.
So then now, again, we’re starting. Now one thing you want to make sure is that depending
upon your seam allowances, your blocks, you want your blocks to be the same size. So you
want to make sure that your, your half square triangles are the same size as your four patches.
So, just if you need to square those up a little bit, go ahead and do that, but this
is, ok so now, there we go, so this row then now is the white one up, so I had one with
the white up, cheddar up, white up, so every row just the opposite. Here we go with this
and there we go and then this one. See how this is coming together? Can you get a, can
you see this? And I really have to look. I’m really angle-y challenged, so I have to look
and make sure that it gets laid out just right. So once you get your quilt all laid out, you’re
going to sew your rows together. So you’re just going to sew all these little pieces
then you’re going to sew row to row and before you know it, you’re going to have
a beautiful antique replica, just like this one. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial
from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.