Finishing – Cloudy Day Quilt Sampler Quilt Along

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Now that we have all our blocks done, it’s time to make them into a quilt!! I like to make the cornerstones with the strip piecing method. This makes it so you don’t have to cut out a ton of little squares. If you would like to assemble your top the way I completed my top, click below to download the directions:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNOAD: Finishing Instructions Cloudy Day Quilt Sampler

FULL LENGTH PATTERN: Cloudy Day Quilt Sampler Pattern
Flying Geese Cloudy Day Quilt Sampler

If you are looking for the Flying Geese Supplemental, you can find that in the Block 1 Blog post.

Quilt Sandwich:
First you will need to make your Quilt Sandwich. You will need to cut and sew your backing fabric to make it fit under your quilt correctly. Make sure it is at least 3 inches wider than your quilt top on all sides (quilt top size + 6 inches). Trim your selvage edge off after joining your pieces.

Make your quilt sandwich by first laying down your quilt backing, wrong side facing up. Tape down to a hard surface, making fabric taut. Next lay your batting on top. Smooth out with your hands, do not stretch. Then lay your quilt top right side up, smooth out with your hands.  

Basting Your Quilt: 
Spray baste: My favorite way to baste my quilt is by using Spray Baste! It makes basting so much easier. If you have allergies, this is probably not a good option for you.
Find a place where you can lay out your quilt. Make sure to tape the backing fabric taut to the floor (or large table).
Here’s  great spray baste tutorial by Cluck Cluck Sew: Spray Baste Tutorial

Pin basting: You can use safety pin about 3 to 4 inches apart (about the width of your hand). I like to use the large curved basting pins. This takes a little longer than the spray basting, but is a great option.

Quilting your Quilt:
This step is totally up to you!

With my quilt I chose to quilt from top to bottom ‘organic’ straight lights approximately 1 inch apart. I used my walking foot with the guide set to 1 inch.

Hand Tie your Quilt: Some prefer to tie there quilt.
Here’s a tutorial on how to do this on Craftsy.

Hand Quilt: Here’s an article that goes over the basics of hand quilting on Craftsy.

Machine Quilt using your Walking Foot: 
Emily Dennis from Quilty Love has a great tutorial on how to Zig zag quilt your quilt with a Walking foot. Click here I love this method of quilting, it give your quilt great texture.

Free Motion Quilting:
Free motion quilting can give you great texture and if you aren’t great at quilting straight lines, this would be great for you. Suzy Williams from Suzy Quilts has a great Free Motion Quilting Tutorial. Click here.

Binding Your Quilt:

Binding is the fabric strip that goes on the edge of your quilt. It covers all of the unfinished edges and rounds out your quilt.

You will want to make sure to square up your quilt before you attach the binding. Cut off the extra batting around the edges and make sure your sides are straight and corners are squared.

Most quilters will cut 2 /12 inch by width of fabric strips and then sew them together at the ends at a diagonal. Then press the strip in half, so that you are wrapping 2 layers of fabric around all of your edges.

You can machine sew the binding to the front of your quilt and wrap it around to the back and hand stitch it down. Or some prefer sewing the binding to the back of the quilt, wrapping it around to the front and machine stitching it down.

One of my favorite binding tutorials is by Suzy Williams of Suzy Quilts. Go check it out!

Make sure to post your photo’s on Instagram with the hashtag #CloudyDayQAL or in the Facebook Group: Happy Cloud Creations Quilt Along (If you are just joining, make sure to answer the Questions so I can weed out the spam/fake accounts from the real ones)

Cloudy Day Quilt Sampler Quilt Along Schedule:
September 19th – Download Fabric Requirements and Blank Coloring Sheet
October 2nd – Block 1
October 9th – Block 2
October 16th – Block 3
October 23rd – Block 4
October 30th – Block 5
November 6th – Block 6
November 13th – Block 7
November 20th – Block 8
November 27th – Block 9
December 4th – Finishing Instructions

Share your progress:
On Instagram use the hashtag: #cloudydayqal
On Facebook you can join the quilt along group: JOIN THE GROUP

Happy Quilting!!
Andrea

I’m excited to sew all my blocks together!!