After all the interest in Declan’s Log Cabin quilt I’ve decided to make Connor’s quilt a community project. For the next few weeks I will be outlining one step a day to lead you to the finished quilt.

The entire project can be done within a weekend, but as a busy Mum I know there is no way I can dedicate and entire weekend to sewing, so breaking it down into seven steps and a couple of hours each day makes the task a lot more achievable, and means that I can churn out another quilt before Christmas!

The finished quilt will measure 40 x 50 inches or 100 x 125 cm. It’s the perfect size for a lap quilt, toddler bed, as a cot blanket for a baby over one year of age or even as a play mat.

You Will Need

• Coloured fabric! These have been scrapbusters for me. If you have the scraps to hand then I highly recommend raiding them and seeing what colour combination you can find. If you’re buying the fabric new then eight – ten different fat quarters should be sufficient for variation and coverage. One jelly roll or two honeybuns should also cover it. Stick to cotton if possible, although some polyblends and bedsheets did make their way into my final quilt, you want them to be in the minority.
• Binding, this can either be bought or made by youself, you will need one yard of your chosen fabric if you’re making your own.
• Three yards of white cotton.
• Cot size batting. I recommend a low loft natural batting such as cotton or bamboo, it’s far easier to quilt than polyester. If I’m making a throw around quilt for the kids I sometimes use plain white fleece instead of batting. It’s up to your budget and what the final use for the quilt will be.
• A 2 inch wide quilting ruler, a rotary cutter (I love my Olfa), a cutting mat, an iron and ironing surface.
• A sewing machine that’s able to drop the feed dogs, a darning foot if you chose to stipple your quilt or a walking foot if you chose to straight quilt – before you go out and buy these, check the accessories that your machine came with, both of these are now starting to be included as standard.
• A spool of white thread for piecing and quilting and a spool of thread that matches your binding.
• A hand sewing needle.

Step One – Selecting your fabric

I love the look of using colours from the same side of the colour wheel in the blocks, the eye will automatically blend them from a distance and it’s not until you get closer that you see all the individual patterns and pieces. The quilt I will be working on this week will be red, yellow and orange, my previous one was blues and greens and I have another in the works in pinks and purples.

Bright colours work wonderfully against the crispness of the white, but don’t discount pastels for a baby quilt.

If you’re unsure about your colour and pattern combinations then I would recommend trying out a precut pack. For the uninitiated, these usually feature a small strip of every fabric in a collection, meaning that all the guess work is taken out for you – it also means less cutting!

My fabric selection was a combination of scraps and some yardage from my stash.

Step Two – Cutting

After selecting your fabric you’ll need to cut it down to size. The blocks we’re making are Off Centre Log Cabins meaning that it’s time to get stripping! If you’re working with precuts then skip this and go straight to step three.

Scraps – using your ruler and rotary cutter, give your scrap a straight edge to work from (not on the bias!). Lining up your ruler cut as many 2 inch wide strips as you can. If you can only squeeze 1.5 inches from certain bits then that’s fine, but don’t go any thinner.

Yardage – I tend to just cut one two inch strip along the width of the fabric if it’s a print. If I’m including solids then I cut two strips from them.

Binding – I like to cut two strips from the fabric I’ve chosen for my binding as well. I think this ties the binding in with the rest of the quilt. If you’re using store bought binding then just skip over this bit.

Don’t rule out fussy cutting! If there’s a piece of fabric with some of your chosen colour then you can always cut away just what you want. I did this with a Michael Miller stripe (you can just see it in the photo above near the bottom of the yardage pile) and it will fit in perfectly.

Don’t worry about having too much, it’s less of an issue than not having enough and having to go back and cut some more. Two inch strips have a multitude of uses and will never go astray if you don’t use them up in this project.

Once you have all of your strips cut lay them out overlapping each other and check to see if anything stands out as not blending well with the rest of the group. You can either remove it completely or just be aware how much you use. Nothing should dominate or take over, you’re looking for complimentary colours and a wide range of patterns.

Step 3 – Cutting The Centres

So that you can get stuck right into sewing tomorrow we’re going to prepare the centre pieces for the blocks.

The quilt layout is 5 x 6, meaning 30 blocks in total.

From the ends of your two inch strips cut 30 rectangles of varying sizes. Don’t go any smaller than 1 x 2 inches or larger than about 2.5 x 2 inches. The more variation you have at this stage then the more “wonkiness” you’ll see in your completed blocks.

As it turned out I had scraped together 27 different fabrics, so only a couple were repeated in my centre pieces.

Again, this is an awesome time for a big of selective fussy cutting. I couldn’t resist putting this little bee and the skull and crossbones front and centre.

Next week will be focusing on Sewing The Blocks. I have a couple of techniques (though some may say “cheats”) to sew them up in no time flat.

Click here to see Day Two>>