Fat Quarter Friday: Easy Quilted Baby Blanket Top

This week I made a quick and easy quilted baby blanket top. If you've never tried quilting before this is a simple and cheap way to figure out if you like it!

Materials:
4 Fat Quarters

Step 1: Trim up your fat quarters so they are all the same size, I cut mine to be 17" x 20".

 Step 2: Cut your fat quarters into ten 2" strips. Make sure that you fat quarter is situated so that the 20" long sides are top and bottom and the 17" long sides are on the sides.

 You should end up with 10 strips from each fat quarter, so 40 total.

 Step 3: Lay them out like so, with two rows of 20 strips. You can do any sort of pattern you want, or make it random. I did a simple repeating pattern and made sure my two rows were off by two so that none of the colors matched up. Something you may want to do at this point if you really like your set up, or you have a bad memory, or you just love technology is to take a picture of your lay out. This way you can refer back to it as you go since it can be easy to mix up placement if you're not careful.

 Step 4: Take the right most strip and fold it over on it's neighbor to the left. So in this picture above, the pink polka dot strip in the bottom right will go face down onto the brown swirlly strip next to it. You will do this for each fabric so that you end up with 10 pairs on your top row and 10 pairs on your bottom row. Again, all of your pairs should be right sides together.

 Step 5: Now we do some sewing. Start by taking that first pair we turned over from the bottom right and bring it over to your sewing machine. You will then sew down the right hand side of the pairs with a 1/4 inch seam. Then bring over the next pair, and the next pair, and the next until you have them all.

 Step 6: Once your strips are sewn into pairs, you'll need to iron the seams. Lay your pairs out on your ironing surface with the seam on the right. Then take the top fabric and open it, ironing as you go. This will ensure that all of your seams are facing the same direction.

Step 7: Once all of your pairs are sewn and ironed, lay them out in your set up again, referring to your picture if needed. Here is where you are going to repeat steps 4-6 again and again until all the strips in your two rows are sewn together.

So fold over your right most pair onto it's neighbor, right sides together. Repeat so you end up with five pair on each row. Sew them together on the right hand side.

Iron them open like before. Lay them out and repeat the steps until completed.

Step 8: Once all of your strips are sewn together lay them out again (remember, you should have 20 strips on top and 20 on bottom).

Fold the top row down onto the bottom row so that they are right sides together. Pin the one side together every few strips and sew it with a 1/4" seam. Iron the seam open.

Your baby blanket quilt top is now complete! It's pretty cute! Check back in later this week to see how to finish the blanket!