Hi I’m Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a really fun project for you today. Take a
look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this gorgeous? I love these fabrics. I love the
blues. It just makes me feel like summertime and sunshine. And I just love it. So to make
this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll up. I’ve used Juicy Jewels by Island
Batiks. It’s just a gorgeous roll, a lot of fun colors. And you’re also going to
need a yard and a quarter of white for your background, your blocks and your border. And
that’s it. So let me show you how to do this.
So to make this quilt, this is the block we’re talking about right here. I call it a stair
step block. It just, chk, chk, chk you know it goes right up the line. And this is how
it fits in the quilt right here. And it’s just so much easier than it looks. So the
first thing you’re going to need is 120 white squares. And I know that sounds like
a lot. But it’s really just eight strips. And you can lay them altogether like this.
I keep mine folded up so I get four at a time. You’re going to put, you can put probably
three more strips down here and cut them all at once. And you’re just going to run along
and cut 2 ½, 2 ½, 2 ½ until you just get a big pile of them. And I like to do that
first. I’m kind of an assembly line sewer and I just like to get them all done. So I’ll
just add these to my pile, just like that. And I’ve got that pile there and then you’re
done and you’re ready to go.
So then you have to cut your strips. Now your, your 2 ½ inch strips, what you’re going
to want to do is open those up because we are going to make several different cuts on
them. And we want to make a bunch of cuts at one time. So I’m just going to lay mine
out here right on top of each other. Let me get another one here. You can stack three
or four, whatever you’d like. I think I’ll start with three. And then we just need to
make some cuts. Now the cuts you’re going to want to make which you know you’re going
to have to remember is two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? The half inch, that’s
what we appreciate. So it’s 2 ½, 4 ½, 6 ½, 8 ½, 10 ½ and those are the cuts you’re
going to make. So we’re going to start right here and we are going to match up our ends.
Make sure we have a nice straight edge to start with. And we’re going to cut 2 ½.
And you’re going to make little piles of these. Then we’re going to cut 4 ½ . We
count one, two, three, four. 2 ½, 4 ½. 6 ½. Two, three, four, five, six and a half.
8 ½. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, make sure you don’t scoot. Let me
count again, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Two, four, six, eight and
let me scoot these over, 10 ½. I have to make those little rhymes for myself so that
I don’t, I don’t forget what I’m doing. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten and a half. Two, four, six, eight, ten and a half. Just like that. Alright so
you’re going to go and do that to all your strips. You’re going to set this aside for
later. And you’re going to make little piles like this. So I have some more cut here. I’m
just going to stack them in piles. Two, four, six, eight, and ten and a half just like this.
So once you get all your pieces cut and they’re all arranged nicely in piles including your
white squares, we are going to go ahead and assemble the block. And we are going to start
that by choosing two 10 ½ inch squares and sewing a white square to the end of each one.
So let’s go to the sewing machine and do that. So we just match them up here and sew
across a quarter of an inch. And you can chain piece these. I’ll slide my next one in under
there. There we go. Let’s go press these back. There we are. So once you get these
pressed then you’re going to go through and you’re going to choose one more from
every pile and they should all be different. And we’re going to sew a white square on
top of each one of these. Attach each one of these to a white square. So let’s go
ahead and take these over to the sewing machine and we’ll just take a little pile of white
squares with us and chain piece these through.
Alright so here’s our first one. And then here’s our next one. Just match them up
and lay them on. One more. There we go. And one more. Here we are. Alright now let’s
trim up, cut them apart. You know I use my little thread cutter here on the end of my
machine a lot for this. Alright let’s press them back. And I’m just going to roll these
back. And then what we’re going to do is we are going to again pick from our pile and
make the other side of these. So again we’re going to start with the eight and it’s going
to be, it’s going to go to the smallest one and then the next 6 ½ is going to go
with this one. And our 4 ½ is going to go with the 6 ½. I know this sounds confusing.
And this one is going on the end of there. So do you see how that’s going to work.
So basically what we’re doing is we’re just going to sew these other smaller ones
to these because we want our strips to remain the same size. If you have one strip that’s
like jutting way out you know you have the wrong piece. But it’s, it just goes together
really easily that way. So there’s that one. Then we’ll sew this one on. And then
we’re going to sew this one on. And then this little one, I’ll take him over here
with me. Alright. So let me press these. Oh I’ve lost them now. Oh here we go. Like
what did I do with them. I’m going to press these. And press this one. And press this
one. Alright.
So one of the things I want to show you, because all brains work differently and the way people
explain things makes different sense to different people, for me what made sense was saying
that I have, I have to sew two of these with a 2 ½ inch one. And two of these, they’re
identical in the way you sew them together. So this one has a 4 ½ and a 6 ½. Both of
them do. But we’re going to end up turning these opposite like this. So that they stair
step. And so that’s kind of how my brain works. Whatever way works for you. You’ve
just got to organize it so that you have one of each shape and size. Oop we don’t want
that one there. We’ll put him over here. And over here. And then we bring in our two
end pieces. And our white square goes on the end of this one. And the white square goes
on the end of this one. Do you see how that goes together? Can you see that? Let me make
sure you can see this. So really what we’re doing is we’re making two identical sets.
See how these two sets are identical? But then what we’re going to do is we’re going
to put them together this way so that our squares run in stair steps right down the
block.
And one of the things you have to be really careful with on this block is your quarter
inch seam. Now when you know most of the things I do I say don’t worry about that quarter
inch, be consistent. But on this one because our block, we want our block to be square,
to end up square, you really have to be careful with that quarter inch seam. So you may want
to, you know, take your ruler and make sure that your sewing machine is sewing, you know,
pretty close to a quarter of an inch. And then maybe put a piece of painter’s tape
on there or use your quarter of an inch foot or something like that. Because you really
do want them to fit together. And, and so the pressing will really help. And then we’re
going to sew our block set together. And I’m going to start right here with these two on
the end. And make sure that my seams are nesting up. Get rid of that thread. And go ahead and
sew them down.
Now my needle can move over on my machine, so I just make sure that it is set so that
I get a, a quarter of an inch. And you may be able to do that or you may just have to
start, you know put a piece of tape and sew a, let that be your guide so that wherever
your needle ends up that your, that your block is able to, your seam is able to end up a
quarter of an inch. So I’m going to actually take this now and let’s put it up to the
ruler and see how I did. And so you can see from the stitch line to the ruler I’m pretty
close. So this, this setting is going to work for me. So then I’m going to open these
up and press them flat. Make sure my blocks stair stepped. And then we’re going to add
the next one. So let’s do that. There we go. So you’re just going to keep adding
and adding these until you have a whole block. And what I kind of like to do is to sew them
in sets of three like this. And I have another set of three over here that I’ve already
put together. And you can see if I’m not careful they’re going to be wrong so we’re
going to flip this side over and put them so that they’re just right. You want those
white squares to stair step. So I’m going to sew these last two pieces together. Just
like this. Make sure I’m right even. Alrighty. Now I like my seams to nest so if I end up
with something. See how this twists right here. I don’t die over that. I just put
my scissor in there and I clip it and I let that seam lay where it wants to lay. And I
don’t die over that because the nesting to me is more important than which way the
seam lays. So then when we open these up we get our block. Let me press it. And then I’m
going to measure it. So let’s see how we did here. We’ve got, oop I need, this ruler
is too small so let me measure it on my mat here. We’ve got 12 ½ this way. And 12 ½
that way so it’s perfect which is what we need. And then we get to lay it out.
Now let’s look at how this block fits into the quilt behind me right here. So we’ve
got, this one goes this way. And we’ve got one, two, three, four big blocks by one, two,
three, four, five big blocks. And this is going to make a quilt that ends up being 56
by 70. And so it’s a pretty good size quilt. And the layout on this is really fun. So because
you have this awesome block design running through it, you can do all kinds of things.
What we’ve done is, you know we’ve criss crossed them so that they, you know, they
criss cross throughout the quilt. But there’s a lot of ways to set this out. So don’t
be afraid to experiment and have fun with that. But what we did was we laid ours together
like this so that the blocks go up, down, up, down on that first row just like this.
Up, down, up, down. And put four of them together. Just sew them together. Because they’re
turned different directions, what I mean by that is these blocks run this way, this block
runs this way, there are no seams to match up. So you can just go ahead and sew these
together. And it just, you know, it goes together very quickly and very beautifully.
Now for this outer border what we did first was we took our 2 ½ inch strip that we cut
out of our yard and a quarter and made a 2 ½ inch stock border on our quilt. We took
the rest of our pieces, remember I had that little stack of leftover pieces out here.
And we piano keyed them. So we decided that we wanted, I believe this is a four inch border.
So we decided that we wanted a four inch border. And you hate waste so we took the rest of
those strips and cut them into 4 ½ inches. Stacked them together this way. Sewed them.
Made a little border and made it go across. See it goes across the top and down the side.
We didn’t have enough to finish. But we didn’t want to let that stop us so what
we did was, what size this came out, which again was 4 ½ we cut the white strip the
same on the top so that it filled it in and it just made one across this top and one across
the bottom down here. So it just framed it. But it enabled us to use all of our strips.
So it made really good use of this roll up. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the
Stair Step block from the MSQC.