Tutorial: Sandstones In The Sea Mini Quilt

Thanks for your visit. 

Today I have a tutorial for my mini quilt, 

Sandstones in the Sea, for the Island Batik Mini Madness. 

I used charms from the French Roast fabric collection charm pack.

I chose 4 tans, 4 browns and 8 blues from the French Roast charm squares pack.

I layered the tans and browns (nicely and evenly) and cut the squares, as shown in the photo below.

I rearranged the colors as the blocks would be sewn. 

I sewed the blocks and set them aside.

I layered the blue charm squares and cut diagonally, twice, as shown in the diagram below. 

I don't like to have the same colors next to each other so I arranged the blue triangles where I liked them with the blocks before sewing.  (I don't have a photo, but this layout photo shows what I came up with).

I sewed the long edges of 2 triangles to opposite sides of the 9-patch blocks. 

After pressing and trimming the little dog ears, I sewed the other 2 triangles to each blocks. 

After sewing the squares together 4 across and 2 down, I sewed only one 2" border strip of a blue (from a different manufacturer) to one side of the quilt. But I knew it needed a bit more to add pizzaz. 

I call this thin white strip a piping (without the cording in it). I cut the strips of white fabric 3/4" wide by the width of fabric and pressed in half, lengthwise. 

I cut a length a little longer than I needed for the long edges. Pinned it in place and sewed with a 1/8" seam allowance. 

The sides were done in the same way, and I made sure the end overlapped the previous pipping strip. 

I added all the piping strips.

I finished sewing the blue borders on the piece to finish the top.

I want to share with you a method I use to get ideas for quilting small items. I use tracing paper over some of the blocks and sketch out ideas. I decided to use the star on the 9-patch. 

 It was easy to use an erasable fabric marking pen to put some dots on the quilt top and sew with my home machine from dot to dot. I use a walking foot to feed all the layers through evenly--no back puckers.

I marked the waves with a chalk marking pen and stitched in lines that curved on the ends with Guttermann thread (I had it on hand and it was the only blue that worked with the colors.

I do hope you gleaned a tip or two from your visit. Perhaps you want to make a mini, go for it. The Island Batik fabrics are great to work with. I was able to finger press my shorter seams, which saved loads of time.

A different Blog Hop to tell you about and a discount code.

Briefly, I am participating in the 

Quilt Qwazy Queens Blog Hop 

which begins TODAY. 

My post date is March 23.

During this blog hop, you can shop at 

Fat Quarter Shop through March 25 

and get 10% off with this code:

seamstobe316

Hop on over to SEAMS TO BE SEW to find out all about it and the great giveaways that are happening daily. Island Batiks has a giveaway!