Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. And I’ve got a fun project
for you today. Take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this great? There’s a lot of
movement going on, a lot of color up here and I can hardly wait to show you how to do
it. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And
we have used a Kim Deal line. And it’s just vibrant and yet still homey. It’s called
Esther’s Heirloom Shirtings and it’s for Henry Glass. You’re also going to need some
accent fabric. So this burgundy here, you’re going to need 1 ¼ yards of that. And for
the white which is the other accent fabric, you’ll also need 1 ¼ but if you want to
include your first border in that, it’s 1 ¾ so not much more and you get that inner
border as well. This outer border out here, this is 1 ½ yards and it’s a nice big six
inch border. Our back here, this is a pretty back and it is 5 ½ yards. And it makes a
pretty good size quilt. This is 75 by 90. So let me show you how to do this because
this is way easier than it looks.
Alright, so what we’re going to do, we’re going to start with two strips like this.
And we are going to sew them together. Now I have a set here that’s sewn together so
you can see this right here. So here’s my two strips. We’ve laid them together, sewed
a quarter of an inch right down the side. And now we’re going to open this up and
we’re going to make some cuts. To cut these, we’re going to use the clearly perfect slotted
trimmer right here and it’s the trimmer B. And I have A, so let me get B right here.
So here is B. B are the whole sizes. And so we’re looking for this to be a six inch
cut. And the six inch ought to fit exactly on your strip set. You can see right here,
let me show you, right here you can see, it fits. If I line up the bottom with the bottom
edge of my strip, it’s perfect. So you’re going to cut your whole strip out like this.
And we’re just going to make that cut and then we’re going to flip our ruler like
this. And we’re just going to keep cutting. We have that one side already done. Line up
your trimmer with the bottom edge of your fabric, cut down the side. And you can cut
off these little, little ends right there. That will help you a little bit in your lining
up. I have all kinds of things caught here. Alright so now I’m going to flip this back
over. And I’m going to again line it up on the bottom, make sure I’ve got a good
hold on it this time because it slipped a little bit that last time. I don’t know
if you noticed that but it did. And here we go. And this one feels like it needs to be
squared up a little bit. It must have been my slide. Take time to do this while you’re
doing it because you want them to, when you start doing them you’re not going to remember
that this one is a little bit off. Alright. So you’re just going to keep doing this
with your whole strip set. And if you don’t like cutting upside down you can always flip
your strip around and do it that way. I don’t mind cutting, as long as I’m cutting to
the left I am good to go. So I’m just going to do this again and again and again. And
I’m going to do my whole strip and I’m going to do this to my whole roll of 2 ½
inch strips. So you’ll end up with a whole bunch of these right here. Let me grab this
one. And I have some more over here.
Now this is what makes the whole thing just pop, is we are going to take these and we
are going to cut our pop colors, our white and our burgundy into 2 ½ inch strips. And
we’re going to sew these triangles onto it. And we’re going to sew all the way down
the side. Half are going to be sewn to the white, half are going to be sewn to the burgundy.
So basically we’re going to lay our triangles on here like this. These are going to look
just like little flags. So we’re going to put them on here like this so we’ll match
up the top right there. And we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch right down this
side. And you’re just going to lay these on here and fill up the whole strip. I think
you can get five on each strip. And so let’s go do some of those right now.
So we’ll come over here. And I’m just going to lay this right along the edge of
this strip right here. I’m going to start off with, there we go, a little bit of a square.
I’ve got to turn my machine on. And then I’m going to, I always take a few anchoring
stitches and then I grab this right here and make sure that it’s nice and lined up. So
once we get this first triangle on, before you put that second one on you have to remember
when you open it up, we’re going to have to cut down. So you want to leave about 2
½ inches in between each triangle set that you put on. So I’m just going to sew along
and then I’ll get to my triangle one next, my next triangle. Alright, now we’ve got
these on and if I were doing this at home I would just keep adding those triangles on,
making sure that you leave about 2 ½ inches in between.
Alright let’s press these open. I can put that down there. We’re just going to lay
these over like this and just press it back. Just like this. And then I’m going to slide
this up here and I”m going to press this one back as well. Alright now what we’re
going to do on these is we’re going to flip these over and our triangle is going to become
kind of our cutting guide. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to lay my, I’m
going to flip this around this way. I’ve got to get accustomed to my left hand there.
And I’m going to lay my ruler along the edge of my triangle up here just like this.
And see how that just goes right along that edge. And I’m just going to keep going and
cut this little part right here. Just like that. And that’s going to give me a side.
And I’m going to trim this little top piece off just a hair, just a hair. There we go.
Alright, so this is the piece you’re looking for right here. Just like this. And let’s
cut another one of those so you can see, you know, how we did that. So again this piece
that comes out straight, it’s going to come straight across like this. And this piece
we’re going to use our triangle as a pattern and it’s going to follow right down the
side of this just like this. And that’s how you do them. And you’ll need one of
these to make one side of the block and one with the red to make the other.
So I have a couple here, I’ll show you how I do this. Here’s this one with the red
on one side.And here’s this one with the white on one side. What we’re going to do
is we’re going to flip these around like this. Just like that. And we’re going to
lay these right sides together now and sew a quarter of an inch right down the side.
So let’s go ahead and do that. Alright now we’re going to press these open. And this
makes one quarter of our block. And so what I would do if I were you is I would mix these
all up. It looks just darling and what you have to remember, again, is that half your
triangles are going to be sewn to the white and the other half of the triangles are going
to be sewn to that burgundy.And then you put two of those together to make this little
block right here. When you’re ready to put your blocks together, we’re going to look
where they come together right here, we’re going to look for putting them together like
this. We’re going to put four of these together just like this. I have some over here. We’re
going to mix up all these different little colors. And I’m going to make sure that
all of my maroons come to the center. Now that’s up to you. That’s personal preference.
I just like how they come to center. Because we could actually do it this way. Just by
flipping those. You know your background, your white fabric can come to the center.
But I like the look of the maroons. The maroon is such a strong color. So we’re going to
do ours with the maroon to the center. But feel free to play with them because you know
as you put them together and you stand back and look at them you may feel differently
about each thing.
So we’re going to sew these together, two on this side, these two on this side and then
we’ll sew them together in the middle. Just like a giant four patch. And we’ll just
come over here and do that. So I’m just lining these up. There’s not really anything
to match on these and so it makes it one of those blocks that’s really a low stress
block. And then here comes the next one. Now I do like to nest up these center seams right
here where they come together, nest those up. But when you come on the sides you have
fabric going this way and fabric going this way so there’s nothing that you really have
to match it to. And now we’re going to come over here and we can just open this up and
we should be able to just sew it together by turning it over on its side like that.
That’s called chain sewing. It’s where you don’t cut the thread in between and
you just, it just lines it all up for you and keeps it together. Again nest those center
seams, those center seams are the ones that matter. And just like that your block is finished.
Let’s take a look at it. Hey that looks pretty cool. Looks awesome, let’s iron that.
Alrighty.
So now when you’re ready to assemble your quilt top, let’s take a look at this quilt
behind me so we can see how we did it. And we’ve got these blocks, see the big block
right here. This is one whole block. We just sew it to the next to the next to the next.
So we’ve got four across and one, two, three, four, five, down. This makes 20 big blocks.
So I want to point this out, when you put these together, like when I get ready to sew
this one to this one, so like this. These two reds don’t match up, they off set like
this and it forms a whole secondary block. This is a fun, quick, easy project and a great
way to use up some of those 2 ½ inch strips. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the
Brilliant Swirl from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.