Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. Welcome to spring. Isn’t this gorgeous? This is such a fun quilt. I love these tulips and it is easy to make. We’re calling this Totally Tulips. I’m going to call it Totally Tula because this is Tula Pink’s fabric and I just love it. It’s her new line called Tabby Road and it’s from Free Spirit. And she just does a great job with her fabric. And it’s just so happy and fun. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares, that’s 42 squares. And we have used Tabby Road by Tula Pink for Free Spirit. And you can see it’s just a happy line. You’re going to need some background. You’re going to need 3 ½ yards, that’s going to take care of all your flowers, your sashings like this, this first inner border. It’s going to take care of all that. You’re also going to need a quarter of a yard of whatever you choose for your stems and that’s your little stem block. And, and then your outer border, we’re going to need 2 ¾ yards for your outer border right here and that’s a six inch border right there. So we put a nice big border on it. And it makes a great size quilt. It’s 89 by 90 so it’s a big quilt. And really fun to make.

So this block is so easy to make. Let me show you how to do it. The tulip is actually made of two blocks. The top is a four patch with one snowballed corner. The bottom is half square triangles that we’re going to make the easy eight method. And so the first thing that you want to do is go through your pack and pull out 14 blocks that you’re going to save and use for your stems. Then you’re going to go to your background fabric and you’re going to have to have 14 ten inch squares from your background fabric to make your leaves. And you’re also going to have to cut some 2 ½ inch strips for your snowballed corners out of your background. So first of all what we’re going to do is we’re going to show you the leaves.

The leaves we’re going to start with whatever fabric we choose for our leaf print we are going to put a white ten inch square on top of it. We’re going to draw a line diagonally both directions. I’ve got one line drawn there. We’re going to draw the other one right here. Now what we’re going to do is this is the method of making half square triangles where you get eight out of each, out of each square. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch on either side of this line and a quarter of an inch on either side of this line and, and then cut them. So first let’s go and let’s go ahead and sew a quarter of an inch on this right here. And when we get to the end we’re just going to whip it around and, and do the other side. And we’re going to do this to both lines. Alright so once you get your lines all sewn we’re going to come over here and we are going to go ahead and cut this into half square triangles. Let me get my iron heated up over there. I’m going to lay my ruler, because this is five inches wide and I’m working with a ten inch square, it should come right to the middle. And I’m going to lay my ruler right on the edge and make a cut straight horizontally. Then I’m going to cut vertically. And you’ll know if you’re in the right place because you should be cutting right through that criss cross. Now we’re also going to cut on our lines so lay your ruler on those lines like this. And on this side as well. And you might have to stick your tongue out or bite your lip like I do when I’m cutting. I always end up with a chapped lip down here. Alright now you can see we’ve got eight of these half square triangles. So we’re going to go press those open. And I’m going to turn them all so the fabric is up. That is the dark side for me and we’re just going to lift them and roll them back. Now these blocks should all be four, 4 ½ inches and so you want to make sure that yours are pretty close to that. And you may need to square them up a little bit. But 4 ½ inches is what we’re looking for on these. And generally they come out pretty good. Let me check one right here. Yep you can’t get much closer than that.

Alright so now we make our leaves. To make our leaves, we want two leaves that are coming out this way. So we are going to lay our blocks together so that one shoots out that way and one shoots out the other way. And I have to do this to make sure that mine are going the right direction because I get a little turned around. You’re going to get two something sets from every square. That’s why you only need 14 of those. And this is going to make our leaves. So now we’re going to sew these together this way. Just like this. Again you’re following that quarter of an inch mark. And I’m just going to chain piece mine one after the other, just like that. Now let’s press these open. Make sure we’ve got these going the right direction. You know I’m such a rogue sewer that as I’m sewing a lot of times I’ll get going on something and I’ll be like, Oh no, they’re all going the same way and then I have to change them.

Alright so here’s our two, our two leaves. We need a stem so out of your quarter of a yard of stem fabric you’re going to cut a 1 ½ by eight inch piece. That should be the length of your block right there. And just make sure that it fits. You know whatever it is you’re making make sure that it fits in the center of your, of your stems. And we’re just going to sew this down to the sides and sew the two stem units together. And we’ll sew this side and then I’m just going to kind of finger press this back and add my other leaf to the other side. Line it up on my quarter of an inch mark and off we go. There’s nothing to really nest or match up on this so you can just go ahead and once you get your top piece in you should be all set. And I’m going to press that on the top and then I’m going to come on the back and press my stems to the inside. I don’t think that really matters but it will help a little bit with your bulk if you press those to the inside. There we go. Now I’m a little long on this one so I’m going to trim this up. And if you actually, if you actually square your squares to 4 ½ you won’t have to do this. I didn’t square mine so I’m dealing with a little bit of extra. But you’ll want to go ahead and square yours. And you want to square them first before you put the stem in. Alright so this is our stem block. This is what we’re looking for for our stem block and now we get to make our flower.

So out of all the other pieces, 28 pieces in your, in your packet you’re going to cut those into fourths. So I’m going to set this over here. And we’re going to cut these into fourths. And again with this ruler because it’s five inches wide I can just lay it on the edge. And do both sides. And I hope you can see how cute this is with that little kitty on there, it’s just adorable. So you’re going to mix these up now. You’re going to have a whole bunch cut. I’ve got a stack over here. And what we’re going to do with these is we’re going to design our flower which means I’m going to choose four different, different packs, I mean four different five inch squares and we’re going to put them together. I want all of mine to be different like this. And then we’re going to go to our background fabric again. We’re going to cut a 2 ½ inch strip like this. I knew I had one there somewhere. And then we’re going to cut it into 2 ½ inch squares. So once we get our strip cut we’re going to sub cut that. You’re going to get 16 squares out of every strip. And I’m just going to go ahead and cut this into 2 ½ like this. You need four of these for each block and there’s 28 flowers total. So I’m just going to cut a few of those.

Alright once you know which four you want to make for your flower like this we’re going to snowball a corner on them. Now it doesn’t matter if you’re just putting together four random blocks which corner you snowball but if you want to make sure your kitty is standing upright, that matters. Because our two, what we’re going to do is we’re going to finger press these and then we’re going to sew a snowball corner. Now the two top ones you want your snowball corner to be facing the middle, ok like this. And your two outer ones, your two bottom ones we want that snowball to face the outside. So if you’re worried about anything being directional then you need to make sure that you lay it out and make sure those are going in the right places. If you’re just sewing prints together you can just snowball one corner and then place them in two in and two out. So let’s go ahead and snowball our corners here. And this is just easy what we’ve done is we’ve taken our little 2 ½ inch square and we are going to sew right straight on that line. We’ve pressed a line diagonally. You can press it, you can draw it, whatever you’d like. And we’re just going to sew these one after the other after the other. There we are, alright.

So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to clip these apart and clip off our corner. You can do that with your scissors or you can do it with a rotary cutter. I’m just going to use my scissors because that’s what I have in my hand from clipping them apart. And then we’re going to press those back. And these I’m just rolling back. So once you get your snowballed corners all pressed down you can lay them any way you want them. It’s just that your two top ones have to face in like this. And you can see we’ve only snowballed one corner so anyway we want to turn these, you know any placement in the four patch that you want to use them will work. But we want to remember the two top ones go in and the two bottom ones go out. Just like that. Now we’re going to sew this together as a four patch. And so I’m just going to sew on this line. The top ones, remember your snowballs are going to meet in the middle. And your bottom one your snowballs are to the outside. And that makes our little tulip. Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew these right together so that it, again it’s a four patch. So make sure your snowballs are at the top and at the bottom. Put them right sides together . You’ll want those middle seams to nest. That means one seam goes one way and one seam goes the other. And you can feel that with your fingers as you’re going along. What I do is I take a few stitches to start and then I nest my seam in there and I can make sure I feel it with my fingers to make sure that there’s no opening in there. And if you need to pin that you can. And then we’re going to press it open. And that is going to make our little tulip top right here. There’s our little flower. Then we’re going to add it to the stem section.

The stem section should match up nicely with the top. And you want the middle of your middle seam right here to match up with your stem. So just kind of line that up. I do it pretty visually. And then we’re just going to sew this down a quarter of an inch. Sew it across. And I want my seams to lay in so I make sure those are going the right direction. And we’re almost there. So isn’t this just as cute as can be? Isn’t that so cute?

So now you’re ready to set your quilt together. And we’ve used some sashing strips on here. They’re 2 ½. They’re going to be the width of your block. Now I want, let’s go look at the quilt really fast so that I can show you how we did this. So every other row starts with a sash. No sash, sash, no sash, sash, no sash, sash. Just like that. And you’re going to build it in long columns like this. So you’re going to sew tulip, sash, tulip, sash, tulip, sash. Half of your rows are going to be like this. The other half are going to have no sash at the top but of course they’ll end up with a sash at the bottom. So as you start putting them together just remember you want them to off set like that. And you’ll put them together in long rows. And you will get rows like this so that you can see them. They’re just a little off set. And you’ll have one long 2 ½ inch strip that you sash between your rows of tulips. So once you get your row of tulips done you’re going to put a sashing row in there.

So once you get your columns made you’re going to end up with four tulips in every column and seven rows across. And then you’re going to add that little 2 ½ inch inner border out here. And you’re going to add your big beefy outer border which is a 5 ½ inch border. It makes a great edge border, frames it all in. Again, the quilt is 89 by 90 so it’s a great size quilt. So we sure hope you’re enjoying springtime and that you enjoy this springtime tutorial on Totally Tulips from the MSQC.