Raaga cross quilt tutorial

 

The other day when I was doing a little Q and A with our studio assistant Amy, I asked her to tell me her favorite project or thing she’d made. It got me thinking a little about my own favorite projects. There are a lot of little things I’ve really enjoyed sewing, especially some of Anabelle’s first dresses (here, and here thanks to Oliver + S patterns), adorned with special little buttons from my collections. But the one that I get to enjoy most often is the Raaga cross quilt that covers our bed. It was the first project I made with our Raaga organic fabric collection, and I absolutely loved working with it, and loved how the quilt turned out. It still makes me very happy. I thought I’d share a little tutorial on how to make this quilt, or one like it. Easy peasy!

 

the Raaga Cross Quilt tutorial

You will need (for a 84×75″ quilt):

scant 1/2 yard cuts of 8 fabrics (I used selections from the Raaga collection)

5 yards off-white or other solid

about 6.5 yards of fabric for the backing

quilt binding or about 3/4 yard fabric to create binding

Step 1 

Cut your printed fabrics into 4×4″ squares. I used between 30 and 40 squares of each print. Then  cut the solids. I used about 182 4×4 white squares, and 97 4×10″ white strips.

Step 2

Lay out your crosses and sew them together with a 1/2″ seam allowance.

Once I have the basic crosses sewn together, I like to lay them out and arrange my design.

Step 3

Once you know how you’d like to arrange all the crosses and squares, go ahead and sew together the full quilt blocks. You will need to sew another set of squares and strips to the top and right sides to finish off the quilt top and make it symmetrical (these were included in the initial count).

Step 4

Sew your quilt blocks together in your arranged design. I usually join them from left to right and then sew the strips from top to bottom.

Step 5

Create your quilt back. This can be as simple as one solid fabric, or you can do a design on the back as well. I joined 6 16×78″ strips of 3 fabrics cross-wise to create the backing for this quilt. Be sure that the backing works out to be larger than the quilt top – I usually add 2 or 3 extra inches all the way around.

Step 6

Cut your batting a few inches larger than the quilt top and pin all three layers together at regular intervals about 1 foot apart (unless you’re handing off to a long-arm quilter, which is what I do, because they usually want the quilt unpinned).

Step 7

Quilt your quilt. Ha! Funny how the longest step can be summed up into such a short sentance. Full disclosure: these days, I hand the quilts off to a long-arm quilter at this point. As much as I love the look of hand-quilting, I just don’t have the time, and my sewing machine is not really set up for major quilting projects. This one was quilted with a wonderful geometric pattern by Holly Trapp of Sunnyvale, CA.

Step 8

Add your quilt binding. Elizabeth Hartman at Oh, Fransson! has a great binding tutorial here, and Allison over at Cluck Cluck Sew has a great tutorial for machine bindings here.

Aaaaand you’re done!