Hi everybody it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got such a fun project for you today. We’re calling it the Freestyle Churndash because you can do anything you want on each little piece. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? I mean it’s just fun. Nothing is the same. Everything is left up to however you want to do it. And so it just lets your imagination soar. This is the block that we’re working on right here. And let me tell you what you need to make this.

So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is you’re going to need one packet of ten inch squares. And I have used Citron Twist by Maria Kalinowski for Canvas Studio for Benartex. You’re also going to need some background fabric. What I used was 3 ½ yards of white but it’s all going to get cut into five inch squares. But you could use a pre cut for that also. For an outer border here, this is a little five inch border. And you’re going to need a yard and a half or a yard and a quarter for that as well. So let me show you how to make this because this is so much fun.

First you’re going to cut your background squares into five inch squares or your background fabric into five inch squares. And everything is made on these squares. This is basically a nine patch. You’re going to use nine of these to make each square. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our ten inch square right here. And the easiest way, I played with this several times before I figured out really what I wanted to do with this. Let me grab my ruler here. Because you know I don’t like waste and I wanted to get the best use I could out of this fabric. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our ten inch square and we’re just going to cut it in half. This seemed to work the easiest for me. I mean you’re welcome to try whatever you want to too because there’s always a better way you know. So then what we’re going to do is, because this is wonky, there are no patterns, no guidelines. This is really up to you. So I try to always remember to leave my, my square, the square, the foundation square that I’m piecing on, on the bottom. That way I don’t get things confused. Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to take this short end of my little piece. And I’m going to put it across here and I’m just going to put it any way I want to. Tilt it any way you’d like. You can put it in as far, you know, until you get so far that you no longer have fabric. But you don’t want to do that. So I just lay it across here like that. And we’re going to go over to the sewing machine and sew this down a quarter of an inch. And we’re going to put one of these squares on either end. And I think that’s going to, that will save us some fabric.

So I lay my presser foot right on the edge of the top piece that I’m putting down. And we are just going to sew across here. And then I like to just flip it around like this and bring another square over here and do the same thing on the, on the, on the opposite side like this. So you can vary them a little bit so that your, you know, your angles are a little different. It’s really fun because you get to do what you want to do. I actually have kind of have a hard time with, with you know, the freedom so it’s kind of fun for me because it’s a little bit out of the box. Ok so again I’m just going to line up my presser foot along that edge. Sew that quarter of an inch. Just like that. Sew off the side. And your piece will look at little like this. Kind of a little funky. And we’re just going to come over here to the ironing board. And remember that our white piece here is our background. That’s the block that’s going to be the foundation piece for what we’re doing. So I’m just going to kind of iron those back. Then I’m going to flip them over. And you want to make sure there’s no folds or pleats in there and so I’m just going to lay this on here and just kind of really roll my iron over here to make sure I don’t have any pleats. Then we’re going to flip this over. Oop I want to make sure this is ironed down. We don’t want that’s folded up because that’s our pattern. That background foundation piece becomes our pattern. So then I’m going to take my ruler and I’m going to lay it right on here like this. And this right here, this square becomes your pattern. So  let me show you, let me just turn this a little bit. Because it might be easier for you to see. So I’m going to lay up my ruler right along the edge of this. And I’m just going to slice up here. And I’m going to stop. I don’t want to cut all the way through because I want to save as much as I can of my side pieces. And then I’m going to come over here. And so it should remain a five inch square just like that. So let’s go ahead and cut this one. So there I am with that one. And one more side. Ok, so now as you do these you’re just going to make a big stack of these. You’re going to put these in a big stack.

And then you should have a piece that looks kind of like this. It’s really kind of weird looking. But these sides now are going to make your bar blocks on the sides. So see these are what I’m calling your bar blocks right here. And we’re going to make those with these sides. So again you keep your foundation square on the bottom. And you’re going to put this on here. And you can tilt this. You can turn it. You know, get a little crazy.  Go ahead, put those on the sides. We’re going to put one block on each side. Again I’m just going to lay it across there and sew across, just like that. And then I’m going to add a piece to the other side. So I’m going to keep my white square on the bottom again. And I’m just going to turn the other side. So you can see how I have this one on this side. Now I’m going to turn this one over to the other side. I’m just going to make a little different. Go the other direction maybe. You want to make sure, like see right here how this comes in. You want to make sure that when you fold it over it’s really going to cover your piece. So I just watch that kind of carefully. And then we’re going to sew that one down as well. You usually don’t have too much trouble with that honestly. There seems to be plenty of room if you do it this way.

Ok so now over to the ironing board and we’re going to press these down again. Make sure your white block is flat underneath, like this. And we’re going to do this side. And then I’m going to do this side. I’m going to flip them over, make sure my white block is nice and flat. And then I’m going to trim this. Again I’m just lining up using this as my pattern. Lining up my ruler along the edge. Going to cut that off. Going to trim this off. And trim around this side. Because all of these stay five inch blocks. They all stay five inch blocks. You’re going to make another pile of those. And the reason we’re making piles of them is because we want to mix them all up when we start putting our blocks together. Now you are just going to go ahead and keep doing that until you have a whole stack of them. I have a stack here that I’ve done that I’m ready to go with. And then we get to assemble our block. Now assembling the block is just as easy as assembling the nine patch. It’s just nine squares.

So we’re going to have a plain square in the middle. And then we’re going to put our bar blocks around it. So you want to lay it out. So I’m going to kind of go through my stack here and get some different colored ones. And let’s see if I can find one more color down here. How about this dark? Like this. Now let’s do this right here. So you just kind of want to play with them until you get it how you want it. Then we’re going to add our corners. So here is a, here’s a cute corner over here. And you never quite know what you’re going to get. And I think this is the fun part. Because you know it can be something so fun. I’m going to swap these over here maybe I think like this. Look at that. And there’s your block. And then you’re just going to sew together three rows of three. So how I like to do that is I like to just sew, lay them right sides together and sew these. And I’ll sew this row and then this middle row and then this bottom row. And so we’re just going to go to the sewing machine and sew these together and make our block.

And here’s our other seam. I just kind of sew from seam to seam. Make sure that they stay nested. And then you’ll have pretty corners on the other side. Alrighty. Let’s take a look at it. See how I did. I’m going to press it first. And this time I just press from the top because I want the whole thing to be nice and flat. And I’m going to flip this over and make sure my seams go the way I want them to. Because that will be helpful. And then let’s look at this. There we go. There’s our finished block. These corners look pretty good. And let me show you how you put these together. So let me move these out of the way.

So when you’re ready to put your squares together you’re just going to butt them right up next to each other and sew them together in rows. So we’ve got four across and five down. So twenty blocks total. And really when you’re sewing them together, again you’re just going to match these little pieces here. These little seams here I mean. And, and just sew them together. And make rows. You’re going to sew your next row to it. You don’t actually even have to really lay them out because, because all the colors are mixed up, I mean it, I mean it’s just fun. It’s quick and easy sewing. So again we sewed four across, five rows of that. We added our five inch border to the outside. And before you know it you have a quilt that is 64 by 77. Great little size of a quilt. So I hope you have fun with this. I hope you, you know, let some of that inner wildness out and make your blocks all different and crazy. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Freestyle Churndash from the MSQC.

Outtakes:

So one more thing--don’t forget about that back. This is where those big prints really shine. Take a look at that. Isn’t this gorgeous? So fun on the back. To back this quilt, what you’re going to need is about 4 ¾ yards of fabric. So have fun.