step by step (basics) guide to sewing quilt

When a friend is having a baby my go to gift is a quilt. I love to sew, and i prefer to give people gifts that are more personal than walking into babies-r-us and picking the first pink or blue item that i see. So my cousin Jackie is having a little girl in April (shes due the day before my birthday) and her baby shower was yesterday, so i put together this step by step on how i did it.

step one: draw a detailed (to scale) chart of what you want your quilt to look like. Include the borders so you can be sure to get a backing big enough for the whole thing.

step 2: choose your colors and color in the chart. This will make it so that you can be sure to cut the right pieces out of the right color fabrics and also prevent ending up with 3 of the same color boxes right next to each other. I would recommend after that you count up all the boxes and then write down how many of what color in what size you need (see bottom right corner of my colored page) and also that will prevent you missing any boxes when it comes time to sew.

step 3: cut out all of your pieces and lay them down so that you can make sure it looks the way you anticipated it looking and you will be happy with it. i also laid it on the backing because it was going to be the same as the border and i wanted to make sure the border would look okay with with colors i chose.

step 4: sew all of the pieces together (this is what makes this step by step the basics). If you have never used a sewing machine then this step is more complicated than "sew them together" and i didnt take any photos of the actual process as my hands were busy. after they are all put together trim the sides so that they are nice and straight. (not yet done at time of photo)

 step 5: i decided to add Lilly's name onto the front with a zig zag stitch so that had to be done after the front was put together but before the back was sewn on.

step 6: add the borders

step 7: sew on the back of the quilt (again, not easy if you're not familiar with sewing)

step 8 (not pictured): tie random corners using yarn. this prevents the front and the back from sliding apart from each other and putting the whole quilt out of whack. you might be able to see some of the yarn ties if you look closely at the above picture.. look at the top left side below the green between the yellow and pink squares. theres a pink yarn tie right there.

and that my friends is how i made this particular quilt. i think it turned out cute, probably my favorite yet. All of the embroidery work is thanks to my MIL in Florida Terry and in the future all of it will be thanks to her because she just recently bought me my very own embroidery machine! im so excited to get that up and running!!