Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a great project for you. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? Now this, all these little squares this looks like a lot of work but I’ve got a method to show you today that you’re going to just love. And it’s going to kind of rock your world because it’s going to teach you a whole new way of sewing. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And we’ve used Lilla by Lana Yonsdautter for Windham fabrics. You’re also going to need two yards of your dark fabric. Now that dark fabric is going to take care of these pieces, that inner border and the binding. The two yards does all that. This outer border here, this is a, this is a little five inch border and you’re going to a yard of fabric for your outer border. So that’s all you need to make this and I love the name Lilla for this little fabric line because Lilla means little. And my mom is Swedish. And as a little girl she always called me Lilla Vannen, which is Little Friend. And it was just kind of sentimental for me. It’s really sweet. So let me show you how to make this.

What you’re going to do is you’re going to unpack your roll of strips. And you’re going to sew four of those together. Now this is just straight quarter inch seaming. And we’re going to iron all our seams going one direction and you’re just going to sew four of them together. You can sew up one side and down the other, whatever you like. Then you’re going to cut a 2 ½ inch strip out of your background. And you’re going to add that to the top right here. So we’re just going to put this strip on here. We’re going to sew a quarter of an inch all the way down. And I’m going to go to the sewing machine and do that. Since I’ve already got my, my four others sewn together. And you should, what this should make is five strips total. So let’s just go ahead and sew this down. Alrighty. You want to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. And you want to make sure those quarter of an inches or your seams are pretty consistent. So what we’re going to do now is we’re going to press this open. And I’m just going to roll this back like this and give it a good press. And go all the way along the side. You want to make sure your top is nice and flat, seams all going the same direction. I’m going to flip this over and look at my seams. And they look pretty good, a little bit of a little rumple. And we’re just going to press those down. So your back, your back should look like this where all your seams are going one direction.

And now comes the secret for what we’re doing. What we’re going to do now is we’re going to fold this up and sew this together in a tube. So we’re going to go right over to our sewing machine and sew this together just like this. Alright, keep them lined up and don’t stretch them. Now for some of you it might work easier if you make sure and trim off one end before you start sewing your tube together because if you trim off one end, you know not all of our pieces line up exactly the same and so if you trim off an end like this then when you go to fold them together you’ll be able to match this. Because if you get this off, you know like down here if I had pulled this over here, my, my strip set would not lay flat and you want this to lay nice and flat. So now we’ve got this nice and flat strip set here. We’re not going to worry about ironing that middle. We’ve just sewn it together in a tube. And we’re going to come across here and we’re going to sew, we’re going to cut I mean, 2 ½ inch strips. And we’re going to cut our whole strip set up just like this. To make each block you’re going to need five of these . So that’s another thing to remember however many strips you have sewn together this way, that’s how many you need to make a block. So we’ve got five strips sewn together. We’re going to cut five of these to make a block. Alright. I’ll cut one more.

Alright, so once you get all your strips cut, I like to put my blocks together from, from the same strip set but you can actually scrap these up and it will work just the same. Alright so now what we do, we’ve got these little strip sets, now you’re going to get out that handy seam ripper. We don’t use one of these very often. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to our dark, our dark piece right here. So here’s our navy, we’re going to go to that dark piece and we’re going to take out that seam. And what I do when I take these out is I just loosen up about every five stitches. And a lot of times, like on this one, the whole the seam is just pulling out from the side. So four little pokes with your seam ripper and you should just be able to pretty much just pull that apart. So here’s our piece. That was our first one. We took it out at the top of the blue. We’re going to hold onto the black and we’re going to count one back to the blue and we’re going to take it out between the blue and that stripey one. And again I’m just going to poke four little stitches out here. These are really pretty easy to take out. Don’t, now let me just say on that, don’t sew your stitches so tiny that it’s hard to take out. It’s got to be small enough to hold it together and big enough to rip. That’s what I always say.

Alright so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to line this one up. And see how they’re starting to cascade. So now we’ve gone to the blue, we’re going to go, or the navy, we’re going to go to the blue and then to the gray and take it out on the next one. Alright. And then see how this is working. Alright so we’ve got, we’ve got the blue, the gray, the yellow. And we take it out. Oop, this one is upside down. I looked at that and thought, Oh my gosh I did that wrong. Alright so now we’ve got the blue, the gray and the yellow. And you just take it out one square down, one square down, one square down. And then it will cascade like that automatically. Now the whole world has seen me use a seam ripper. Alright so there’s that. And then we go right back around here to where we’re at the navy and we’re taking it out with the gray little petals like this. And there we are. Now these get sewn together 2 ½. You’re going to want to iron these so these are nice and flat because we had them in a tube. So, I mean it’s just going to lay together easier if they’re ironed. So I’m just going to press these and press them. Now also if you start to put these together and your seams, you can’t nest them on the back or you twist one seam to, to nest to the other seam, don’t worry about that. This is going to lay nice and flat.

Alright so here we’ve got our block. We’re going to keep in order. We’re going to put this on top of here. We’re going to feel to nest these seams. You want to make sure that these little edges stay together. And we’re just going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. And we’re going to do this to all of our strips. And it is a little bit of matching but you’ll get pretty good at it. You know you may be a little nervous about it on the first one but by the time you’ve sewn, you know, a bunch of these together, you are going to be a pro. Alright let’s see how I did on these two. Because I like to iron in between each little junction too, it kind of sets your seams up for the next one. So if these, if these are laying a different way or whatever. Mine are a little cattywampus, I don’t really worry about that because I know nobody is going to look inside my quilt. Nobody is going to peek inside there and see what’s happening. Alright so this next one we’re going to do the same thing on. We’re going to make the whole block that way. When we get all those together you get a block that looks like this. How cool is that? And it really does come together much easier than you think. And then you get to set them together. There’s lots of ways to set these together and the way we did it was so that our dark, our dark squares came together in the middle to form sort of a four patch like this. Let’s look at this quilt behind me. So see right here how these come together and here. This is four blocks right here that come together on these edges to make a four patch. And so then you’re just sewing them together. And again you’re just going to match up and nest up your seams just like this. So that as you sew them together, they all line up perfectly straight and you catch those seams. So just make sure that you’re, that you’re lining them up. And I actually have two blocks that match here. When I put the quilt together I probably would not do that. Just because, just because it shows less, it hides that, it helps you hide that a little more I case you’re not perfect. Let me iron these apart.

Alright so here’s our first two like this. So you can see, you know, they, they look pretty good. And, and we’re just going to do that. And I just made, when I took mine out I put them on the design wall and I just made the color kind of flow through, looked at what I was doing. Each one of these blocks is from a different strip set that we’ve sewn together. And we’ve got one, two, three, four, five blocks by six down. So you’re going to make a total of 30 blocks. Now that leaves a little bit leftover in the end of your strip. You have a, you know you can get a few more pieces out there but not enough to make a single square. So what I did was I took some of those leftover pieces and I put them together in squares. So you could see that this whole thing is scrappy. So you don’t have, you don’t have necessarily two colors that follow each other down through the whole block. But you still get the design because you’ve picked a stand out solid fabric that’s really going to show your design as you put these together. So you can use those. I’m probably going to use these in a separate little project like a table runner or something like that because I like, I like the symmetry of all of them, of my blocks, of seeing the squares cascade down.

Now a couple more things about this. You change the number of strips and you get bigger blocks. You’re going to again remember however many, however strips you’re, you’re sewing in long, if you sew five, you’re going to cut five to make a block. So this is just a fun great way to put them together because you just sew them in a tube and take them apart at every, you know just cascading seams down. Now I have to admit to you also that when I started picking these apart first I made some mistakes. You know I got it and I’m like, Wait that isn’t it, it doesn’t fit anywhere. And so it’s just so easy. You’re just going to sew the seam right back together and then take it apart where you’re supposed to take it apart. You know don’t stress about that because I did not do it perfect the first time either because I’m a little challenged that way. So this is a great project, an easy way to put a, this kind of a cascading strip set together. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Crossing Paths quilt from the MSQC.