Quilt As You Go

First of all, good news....our insurance is going to help with the cost of repairing our sun room!  Thanks to my sister and dad for insisting we call our insurance company, the bill is not going to be all on us!  Tony and I just didn't think to call because it wasn't storm damage, just an old, bad roof, unbeknownst to us.  We figured we deal with it on our own.  The insurance won't cover the roof, but it will help with the water damage.  So, yay!   Second, we have new front windows!  The old windows were, well, old and ugly!  Now that we are having to deal with the sun room, the other windows will have to wait a bit.  Almost makes me nervous though...when we get the next set of windows, what's going to go wrong after that?!  If the sun room damage had occurred just a couple of weeks earlier, we would have put off getting new windows. Here's the living room before and after!

Now on to quilty stuff!  I belong to 4 quilting message boards; really I'm just a stalker lurker!  I seldom make comments, but enjoy seeing what others are doing.  This week when I checked in on one, someone had posted about a quilt-as-you-go quilt that grabbed my attention.  I've never done a quilt-as-you-go quilt so I started googling and found several tutorials about it.  I followed the instructions.  And it worked!  Only then did I think, I should put this on my blog; so no process pictures of the first one I made.  And then I thought I had better write my own tutorial, with my own pictures,  so I'll have something to refresh my memory later on!

Cut 2 light squares and 2 dark squares.  I used 5 inch squares because that's what I had in my stash!

Sew a light and a dark together.  Press toward the dark side. (I always think of Star Wars whenever I see that!)

Sew those units together, nesting the seams, to make a 4 patch.

Here comes the different part.  With right sides together, bring one edge of the block to its opposite edge.  Pin along the now short sides and stitch.

Trim the corners.  At this stage, there are three stitched sides and one left open.

Now the fun part! Open up the block and bring the short ends together, matching the seams.

Stitch, leaving an opening.  (On this block, I stitched from one end to past the center seam, thinking that would get the center matching really nicely.  And it did, but it made the batting process and the hand-stitching more difficult.  On my first block, I had left the center open, and that's the way I'll do the others from now on.  Makes it easier for inserting the batting and the hand-stitching.)  Use something pointy to get those corners out nicely.

Measure your finished block and cut a piece of batting that size.  My block finishes at 6 1/4 inches.  

Stuff the batting into the block, being careful not to stretch the batting.  (I'm hoping this step gets faster the more I do it!)  Hand-stitch the opening closed. 

Press the block carefully.

Here are my first two blocks!  I haven't quilted them yet, can't decide what I want to do!  And to put them together...most tutorials say to whip-stitch them together, other say zig-zag, or use a decorative stitch on your machine.  Again, I haven't decided which I'll do yet!

This is a fun way to use up scraps!  The front will be exactly the same as the front, a reversible quilt!  Even though this is a technique that has been around for-ev-er, I've never done it.  I do have some concerns but I don't think it will be a big deal when it's all done.  The edges are on the bias.  Can you say, "Stretchy?!"  I'm hoping once they are all sewn together, they'll be stabilized. Will just hand-sewing the blocks together last through all that a well-loved quilt goes through?  And then, what about the outside edges of the finished quilt?  That's on the bias too.  I'm thinking I'll bind it even though the edges are finished.  All my concerns about this type of quilt may be completely unwarranted once it's all quilted.  If you have made a quilt like this, I would love to hear from you!  

LaDonna