Hi everybody it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a great project for you today. Let’s look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this great? This is really fun. And it looks like so much work. Wait until you see how easy it is. So to make this quilt, what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips that’s 40 of them. And we’ve Madam Rouge by French General for Moda. You’re also going to need some 2 ½ inch strips of your solid color. And we’ve used two yards of fabric for that. But because they are 2 ½ inch strips you can actually use a jelly roll of those but you won’t use them all. So just know that. That’s also what we did for our first outer border. We included that in the two yards of background fabric that you need. For your border you’re going to need one yard. And we have a little six inch border out there and it just looks really cool. Now if you want to back this quilt with the same fabric, you’re going to need four yards. And we’ve used this beautiful piece that comes from the line. And I mean it’s just a great piece.

So also, last but not least, you’re going to need the Basic X Block. And this is so much fun. First of all I love the packaging. It’s just so cute. It’s got all kinds of tips and ideas. You keep opening and opening and here’s your ruler, your Basic X Ruler in there. But I love how it gives you all kinds of other ideas as well as the one I’m showing you today. So it’s really fun, really fun packaging.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew strip sets together. And I have taken two strips from my roll of color and sewn them together with one strip of background color. We just did quarter inch seams and we sewed straight down them. And sewed strip sets together. And I did this with my whole roll. And so then you have to cut your X blocks. Now this is a regular square, just a straight square. But the lines on it are kind of diagonally. And so what you’re going to do is you’re going to lay this on here. And I have this over a little bit so you can see the lines. But this line here is going to match up on this edge here. Now there’s a couple of things I want to point out. Your quarter inch is pretty important on this. Even if it’s a little scant that’s ok. The other thing to remember is right here you can see my block actually sticks out a little bit over the edge, that won’t matter because it’s going to be enclosed in the seam. So don’t worry about that. Then what we’re going to do is we’re just going to go ahead and cut these out. So I lay my line up on here. And actually this is important too. You want to make sure that your block stays the same. So, so I’m putting it so that I can read the word. And then I’m lining it up here on my, on my, lining one side, I’m just making sure one side matches with the seam. And we’re just going to go ahead and make these cuts. We’re going to cut it on all four sides, just like this. And we’re going to do this to the whole strip.

Once you get all your pieces cut you should have seven blocks. So what we’re going to do with this seven. Oh actually you’ll have some of these little leftover pieces too. And they actually even give you ideas of what to do with the leftovers. And you know I love that because we don’t want too much waste. So be sure and take a look at that. But what we’re going to do with this is we’re going to make a star. Now when I put my quilt together, you can do the whole thing scrappy, but I actually wanted some stars to come together. So I made as many of these stars as I could. And out of each strip set you’re going to get one whole block like this. So four of them makes a block. And you’re going to have three leftover pieces. Now when you put this together, you know they all go the same way but you just rotate them so that it makes this star. Then you’re going to sew these two together and these two together, just like this. And I’m going to take them over to the sewing machine and do that.

And again we’re going to try and stick with that quarter of an inch. And I’m just going to line these up. Sew down that one. Here’s comes the next one. Now before you sew the two together you want to open them up and make sure that they’re going the right direction. That you didn’t accidentally sew the wrong two. So here, here it is. You can see that is going to work. And I’m just going to lay this together and I’m going to do it before I iron it. You can iron if you want to. It doesn’t really matter. What you want to make sure you do is nest your seams so that one seam goes one direction, one seam goes the other. And sometimes that’s a little easier to do before you’ve ironed. For me anyway, but you know again, that’s personal. There’s all kinds of ironing opinions out there. Alright so then we have a square, a block that looks like this. Now you’ll notice because this is all the same fabric, this isn’t crucial, this meeting point. But it’s always nice when they come together. So now I’m just going to press this from the top. And you want to make sure that there are no pleats or folds in your seams because you want to, that changes the size of your block. And you want your blocks to match up. Then I’m going to flip it over and I’m going to make my seams go the way they want to go. Usually they’re pretty opinionated these, these little seams. And so you just kind of flatten them down because we’re just looking for a nice flat block. Now you’re going to go ahead and do that with every strip set you’ve got. Now let’s look at the quilt real quick. So here’s my whole stars right here. And they’re in the center. So we have one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five so we have four by five in the center that we’re going to put together.

So once you get your blocks done then you’re going to want to sew those together. And seriously they’re just going to come together like this. What it’s going to mean for your quilt is you’re going to have one set of stars that matched and one set that’s scrappy, which I kind of like that. But then you have all these leftover blocks right here. You get three out of each strip set. So what I went ahead and did was I went ahead and sewed halves together, star halves. And I’ll do that right here. We’ll just sew one real quick so you can see what I’m talking about. Because I didn’t want to waste these blocks and I wanted to make my quilt bigger so I bordered the whole thing with these halves. And I’ll show you how they work. How that works right here. So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to put these together like this. And you see how it’s going to form whole new stars up here. So your half lines the top. So here it is right here. Here’s our half block. And it, you know, comes on the top and then there forms a scrappy star right here. So you’ve got your whole star and your scrappy. And your scrap, you’re going to scrap on each corner. But then all the way around the top and the sides I used these half blocks. So that I would be able to get more quilt, more bang for my bluck, excuse me, more bang for my buck. And they go in all the way around, just like that.

So I really enjoyed making this quilt. I love the line and I loved the ruler. And we hope you enjoy this tutorial on the Basic X Block quilt from the MSQC.