Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun project for you today. Take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? Now there’s a lot of order to this quilt and that’s why I called it English Garden. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an English Garden but there’s so much planning and order and beauty that goes into them. And that’s what I thought of when this pattern came together. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares. And we’ve used Evergreen by Edyta Sitar for Andover Fabrics and it’s a beautiful line. It did have some light fabrics in it and I wanted this rich full green color throughout the whole thing so I only made 30 blocks so I used 30 of those squares. I also used 30 background squares. Now for the plum color you’re going to need a yard and ¾ and it’s this beautiful plum color. And it also takes in this first border. Look how good I matched this sweater. I mean this is good, right? Who would have known? Anyway it makes a really fun quilt really easy.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take one square of background and one square of our green and we’re going to put them right sides together like this. And we are going to sew a quarter of an inch all the way around this block. Now I have one here that’s already done right here. And what you’re going to do, some of the things people ask me about, you know, when I’m doing this, do you sew right off the end, do you stop and pivot? I just sew right off the end. I”m always in a hurry. You know moving fast and I just sew right off the end. Alright so what I’ve done here is I’ve taken my ruler and I lined it up corner to corner. So don’t worry. Like if you’re sewing around and you get like a little tuck in your corners or something. It’s not going to matter. It’s not going to matter at all. What you want to concentrate on is making sure that your seam line is the same on all four sides but even that’s not going to matter too much because we are now going to square these.

So I’m going to use my clearly perfect slotted trimmer to do this because I’m going to lay it on here and I’m going to square these at the biggest piece. So we’re at the 6 ½. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull this ruler right over to the edge like this and square it at 6 ½. Now this means I only have to cut off one side and that’s how this, not all of them work out this way. Sometimes you have to cut off both sides. But this one worked out that way, so 6 ½. So let’s just try a few of these. Again we’re going to lay, you’re going to match their seam line on your seam line and we are just going to trim off our little dog ears like this and like this. And then we’re going to trim up this side and this squares things right to 6 ½. I feel like this tool was a little present for me because I had such a hard time wrapping my head around squaring blocks. I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t too much make sense of it and it’s been a gift for me. So I’m cutting off my dog ears and I”m seeing that this doesn’t lay up here straight on this one side. So then you have to trim both sides like this. And that makes your block perfectly square. And we’ll do this last one as well. So again my seam line lines up on their seam line. We’re going to see if we can put it all the way to one edge and I’m going to end up trimming a little bit on this one as well. So you know that seam around, it really doesn’t matter because we’re going to square these. But we do want to square them so that they’re all 6 ½.

Ok so now we’ve got all four of these cut and you want to do this to all 30 of your blocks. You want to do all your sewing, all your cutting because when we put these back together we want to mix them up. So I’m going to lay my dark on the top and just roll these back, press to the dark side to hide that little seam. Oop, there we go. One more. And then one more, here we go. Alright so you’ll have four, you’re going to do this, you’re just going to put them in a pile like this. And then you’re going to pull them and put four of them together that you want to use in a block. And they should be different. Mine were all different. And I love all the different hues in this line. And so what we’re going to do now is once you get all your half square triangles made, we need to snowball those corners. And this is what I’m talking about with this block. And we’re going to sew little 2 ½ inch squares onto the corners of our block. So we’re going to bring four of these together that have different prints on them. And I’ve got my 2 ½ inch squares cut here. And I’m going to do a little sew line on them. Now after doing two of these on every single half square triangle. I actually got really good at sewing just corner to corner and I think you will too. But I’m going to start by showing you, you can either draw a line or press a line corner to corner on your blocks. And then we’re going to put them right here on the edges this way. And we’re going to sew, our sew line is going to be across the seam like this. So here’s our seam and our snowball is going to be across the seam. So we’re going to add these to both corners like this and just sew right on that line. So I’m going to grab two of these and two more of these little blocks so that I have enough to finish a whole block. Alright so line your edge up, your edges up on the corner because we’ve squared these so we know we can get a real nice straight line on the corner with these. As long as our block is lined right into that corner. Alright flip it around and do the other side. And I”m starting right in the corner here. And really, I mean, you’ll get really good at this corner to corner thing once you do a few. You know it’s that whole thing that sewing is just practice, it’s just practice and practice. And that’s why you may start drawing the line and then you’ll get brave and you’ll be like, I don’t know, and then you’ll see like Oh that worked. And so you’ll, you’ll be able to just shoot from one side to the other pretty easily. Just like I did right there with no line. It’s kind of crazy but, you know, we can get there. Alright here we go.

Alright so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to trim of these edges and iron them back. You can use a rotary cutter for this or you can trim with your scissors, whatever you want to do. I’m generally, you know, I’m one of those who grabs whatever tool is the closest and I use that one. I happen to grab my scissors today. Alright so now we’re going to press these open and your squares should remain square. And you’re going to do this to your whole pile of them. And then we’re ready to assemble our block. So I have two of these and I have two already done right here and I’ll leave these in a pile. And we’re going to assemble this like a pinwheel.

And so you want to remember that your color and your light square is going to be next to each other. And your purple, your plum color is going to meet in the center. So we want to make sure it goes like this. So we have this one . And remember your white to your color. Purple lines up in the center. Your purple lines up to the center, white to the color like that. So now we’re ready to go to the sewing machine. So I’m just going to lay these on top of each other like this and I”m going to take this first block. And I like to start here where there’s no other extra fabric. We’re just lining up this edge and then you just want to make sure when you pull it together that these two corners line up pretty close, ok? So we’re going to come over here to the sewing machine and we’re going to start, quarter of an inch right down here. Take a few little anchoring stitches and then make sure your two corners are lined up and sew a quarter of an inch right down that side. Now on this one I’m actually going to start on the purple because that way I can put my block together as a whole unit when I’m done sewing it. So I’ve lined up my purple, my edges match and I’m going to make this come clear out to the corner. And then I’m ready to sew these two together and I’m going to open them and check and yep that’s right. We want all those purples to come together in the corner. So line up this edge out here, slide it under your foot and sew a quarter of an inch and then just start a little bit and make sure your little middle seams are matching. And then this one right here. And then make sure these line up pretty close. And then come out to the edge on this one. Alright let’s press it and see what it looks like. Ok so, actually that came out pretty nice. Let’s press that nice and flat. I’m looking at all my little seams where my blocks came together. And this is pretty forgiving actually, you know, you don’t have to die if they’re not exactly the same because it’s not going to, you know, in the scheme of things it’s not going to show too bad. Like this one right here, this one is a little bit off. But you can’t really tell that too much and if I had centered it just a tad better it would be perfect. But it doesn’t bother me enough to take it out and change it.

So once you get your block done you are ready for the layout. And this is a super easy layout because basically you’re just going to sew your two blocks together. So they’re going to meet up just like this. And they’re going to form secondary squares on point at every corner. And so it just makes it really cool. One of the things you absolutely must do on this is you must make sure that all your pinwheels are going the same direction or you’re going to lose the pattern. And so basically we’re going to put them together. Let’s look at the quilt. We’re going to put them together. And see here’s our block. And we’ve just sewn them right together. And you do the same thing all your rows go the same way. Sew them right together. In this top row we have five across and six down as I used 30 of those square. So it’s quick and easy. It’s a beautiful quilt. I love the order and the structure. And that’s why we named it English Garden. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial from the MSQC.