Stuck at Home? Here’s a Free and Easy Quilt to Make!

Am I the only person who feels like they’re being held hostage?

C’mon… staying home is awesome any other time – seriously – I will totally make things up to stay at home. Family of introverts here….

The goal was to have this post up a few days ago, but I will admit that I actually found it difficult to finish this project because, well, I am riding the struggle bus – especially since I feel like I woke up in the USSR. That said – I want to share this quilt project with you today because maybe you need something else to do as well 😊

Background

In planning some easy and stash friendly projects, I was originally going to do a classic block pretty similar to this. Then I spied these beauties. You see, I have had a matching jelly roll and charm pack hanging around, just waiting for a project where I can use both. I don’t know about you, but sometimes working with strips I want to add matching squares, and vice versa. So when I snagged this particular jelly roll I added a charm pack to go along with it.

Then, in my stash they sat.

Collecting dust.

For a very long while.

Then…. The zombie apocalypse.

Yes. Yes I did just crack a joke about this situation because humor is a better way to pass the time in my house than tears.

A couple of things – I started out by making one block, just to see how it went (and to get measurements) and had no intention of incorporating a background color. I was just going to piece them back together with a yin/yang feeling.

Of course, AFTER I pieced and cut all the blocks on the diagonal, I didn’t like the way they looked together. Not because I didn’t like the original test block, but rather because I was using precuts the consistent yin/yang wasn’t going to work for the whole quilt.

I decided to sleep on it.

Inspiration of course struck in the middle of the night and luckily I remembered it in the morning! I decided I would incorporate a background color and turn them into half square triangles. Luck held out in the stash department as well, because I had just added a few 2 yard cuts of tone on tones a few weeks ago. Auditioning them took a few hours and one additional opinion – the hubby can be super awesome when he wants to be – and we had a winner!

There are two main reasons I told you this – 1. I would probably not have pieced these blocks this way if I hadn’t already cut them, and 2. to say that even though I ended up somewhere other than where I’d intended, I am still happy with the outcome!

A few notes on why I chose to list the fabric requirements the way I have:

• I used precuts, but in case you want to use scraps or stash, I wanted you to know the sizes and numbers you’re looking for vs straight yardage.
• Not ALL precuts were utilized here – there were stripes. I didn’t want to use them for this because I think they would have looked funny in this block and quilt.
• I gave you the yardage for the background color because I knew how much I started with – I used almost all of it.
• Mathematically, Piece B really should have been 9” but it wasn’t. I would try piecing one block before you cut everything as yours may actually need the 9” – better safe than sorry.

As with all patterns – read through the whole thing before you commit as you might decided to do it slightly differently. These instructions are for the way I pieced the blocks for the sake of keeping it simple.

Since I cannot quilt this yet (the shop is closed for now), the quilt top I ended up with is approximately 60″ square and contains 64 blocks.

Standard quilting stuff applies – ¼” seam and RST = right sides together.

Fabric requirements:

32, 5” squares
64, 2.5” x 5” pieces (Piece A)
64, 2.5” x 8.75” pieces (Piece B)
2 yards, background fabric cut into 32, 8.5” squares – sub cut them on the diagonal into 64 triangles

Piecing

For all of my blocks, I chose to match Pieces A and B to each other, but not to the center square – totally up to you.

Take a 5” square and two As – stitch one each to opposite sides of the 5” square and press.

Take two matching Bs and stitch to the top and bottom of the now rectangle and press. (Hopefully you press better than I did on this test block…)

When complete, square the new block down to 8.5”.

(Please note – I hate squaring things up, but trust me when I say this makes things easier in the long run)

Once all your blocks are squared to 8.5”, cut each diagonally to create 64 triangles.

Taking one pieced triangle and one background triangle, place RST and stitch along the long side. Press open.

Repeat with each set – until you have completed all the blocks.

Layout

As I said – I did not use all of my precuts so I ended up with 64 blocks. No idea how many I would have gotten if I had used all the precuts. I opted to go with a fun, slightly more modern layout for mine – and this is about as modern as I will likely get.

The possibilities here are pretty unlimited as HST are pretty versatile.

Have fun with your design wall – take some pictures of different layouts, decide what you like best and go from there. For this layout, I started with piecing the square in the upper left. I moved out from there, piecing in sections so I didn’t confuse myself and stitch the wrong side.

Not that I have ever done that.

Much.

Here is my completed top – (as I mentioned, I will post more pics when I get done quilting it)

 

Anyway – please share if you decide to do this project – I would love to see your photos!

Already planning another project using stash and/or scraps so please stay tuned!