Make a "Crossing Paths" Quilt with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star! (Video Tutorial)

Hello everyone, I'm Jenny from MSQC. And I have a great project for you. Let's take a look at this

quilt

behind me. Isn't it fun? Now all these little squares seem like a lot of work, but today I have a method to show you that you will love. And it's going to rock your world because it's going to teach you a whole new way to sew. So to

make

this

quilt

, what you will need is a roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And we have used Lilla de Lana Yonsdautter for the Windham fabrics. You will also need two yards of dark fabric.

Now that dark fabric is going to take care of these pieces, that inside border and the binding. The two yards do all that. This outside border here, this is a small five inch border and you will use one yard of fabric for your outside border. That's all you need to

make

this and I love the name Lilla for this little line of fabrics because Lilla means little. And my mom is Swedish. And when she was little she always called me Lilla Vannen, which is Little Friend. And it was a little sentimental for me. It's really sweet.

Let me show you how to do this. What you are going to do is unpack your roll of strips. And you're going to sew four of those together. Now this is just a quarter inch straight seam. And we're going to iron all of our seams in one direction and you're only going to sew four of them together. You can sew on one side and the other, however you want. Next, you will cut a 2 ½ inch strip from the bottom. And you're going to add that up here. So let's put this strip here. We're going to sew a quarter of an inch down.

And I'm going to go to the sewing machine and do that. As I already have my other four sewn together. And you should, what you should do is five strips in total. So let's go ahead and sew this. Very good. You want to sew a quarter inch down the side. And you want to make sure that those quarter inches or your seams are pretty consistent. So what we're going to do now is press this to open it. And I'm just going to reverse this like this and give it some good press. And go all the way down the side.

You want to make sure your blouse is nice and flat, and that all the seams are going in the same direction. I'm going to turn this over and look at my seams. And they look pretty good, a little wrinkled. And we're just going to press them down. Then your back should look like this, where all the seams go in one direction. And now comes the secret of what we are doing. What we are going to do now is fold this and sew it into a tube. So we're going to go straight to our sewing machine and sew this like this.

Alright, keep them aligned and don't stretch them. Now, some of you might find it easier if you make sure to trim one end before you

star

t sewing the tube, because if you trim one end, you know that not all of our pieces line up exactly the same, so if you trim from one end like this, when you double them you can join them. Because if you take this out, you know, down here, if I had taken this out here, my set of strips wouldn't be flat and you want this to be nice and flat. So now we have this nice, flat set of strips here.

We're not going to worry about ironing that medium. We just sewed it into a tube. And we're going to cross over here and we're going to sew, we're going to cut, I mean, 2 ½ inch strips. And we're going to cut our entire strip set up like this. To make each block you will need five of these. So another thing is to remember that no matter how many strips you've sewn this way, that's how many you need to make one block. So we have five strips sewn together. We are going to cut five of these to make one block.

Alright. I'll cut one more. Alright, once you've cut all the strips, I like to put my blocks together from the same set of strips, but you can throw them away and it will work the same. Alright, now what we do, we have these little sets of strips, now you're going to get out that handy seam ripper. We don't use one of these very often. But what we're going to do is go to our darkness, our dark piece right here. So here's our navy, we're going to go to that dark piece and we're going to remove that seam.

And what I do when I take them off is I loosen them every five stitches. And many times, like this one, the entire seam just comes off the side. So, four small touches with the seam ripper and you should be able to practically separate it. So here is our piece. That was the first. We take it out on top of the blue. We're going to hold on to the black and we're going to count one to the blue and we're going to take it out between the blue and the striped. And again I'm going to make four little points here.

These are actually quite easy to take off. No, now let me tell you that, do not sew stitches so small that they are difficult to remove. It has to be small enough to hold it together and big enough to break it. That's what I always say. Alright, now what we're going to do is align this one. And see how they are

star

ting to cascade. So now we've moved on to blue, we're going to go, or navy blue, we're going to go to blue and then gray and we'll take it out on the next one. Alright. And then see how this works.

Okay, we have the blue, the gray, the yellow. And we take it out. Wow, this one is backwards. I looked at it and thought: Oh my God, I did it wrong. Alright, now we have blue, gray and yellow. And you just take it out one square down, one square down, one square down. And then it will cascade like this automatically. Now everyone has seen me use a seam ripper. Very well, that's all. And then we go back this way to where we are in the marina and we take it out with the little gray petals like this.

And there we are. Now these are sewn together 2 ½. You'll want to iron them so they're nice and flat because we had them in a tube. So, I want to say that they will be easier if they are ironed. So I'm just going to push them and push them. Now if you start putting these and your seams together, you can't nest them in the back or twist one seam to nest in the other seam, don't worry about that. This will be nice and flat. Alright, here we have our block. We will maintain order. Let's put this on top here.

Let's feel how to nest these seams. You want to make sure these little edges stay together. And we're only going to sew a quarter of an inch down the side. And we're going to do this with all of our strips. And it's a bit of a coincidence, but you'll get it done pretty well. You know you might be a little nervous with the first one, but when you've sewn, you know, a bunch of these together, you'll be a pro. Alright, let's see how I did with these two. Since I also like to iron between each small seam, that prepares the seams for the next one.

So if these, if these are placed in a different way or whatever. Mine are a little bitchy, I don't really worry about it because I know no one is going to look inside my quilt. No one is going to look inside and see what's going on. Very good, in the next one we are going to do the same. This is how we are going to make the entire block. When we put them all together, you get a block that looks like this. How cool is that? And it really is much easier than you think. And then you can put them together.

There are many ways to place them together and the way we did it was so that our dark squares met in the middle to form sort of four patches like this. Let's look at this quilt behind me. So see how they combine here and here. Here are four blocks that join together at these edges to form a patch of four. And then you just sew them together. And again, you're going to join and fit the seams like this. So that when you sew them together, they all sit perfectly straight and you can catch those seams. So make sure you line them up.

And I actually have two matching blocks here. When I put the quilt together I probably wouldn't do that. Just because, just because it shows less, it hides it, it helps you hide it a little bit more. In case you are not perfect. Let me iron them. Alright, here are our first two like that. So you can see, you know, they look pretty good. And we're just going to do that. And I just did, when I took mine out, put it on the design wall and made the color flow, I looked at what I was doing. Each of these blocks comes from a different set of strips that we have sewn together.

And we have one, two, three, four, five blocks times six down. So you are going to make a total of 30 blocks. That leaves a little bit left over at the end of the strip. You have one, you know you can get a few more pieces, but not enough to make a single square. So what I did was take some of those leftover pieces and put them together into squares. So you can see that all this is complicated. So you don't have, you don't necessarily have two colors that follow each other throughout the entire block. But you'll still get the design because you chose a solid, standout fabric that will really show off your design when you put them together.

Then you can use them. I'll probably use them in a separate little project like a table runner or something because I like the symmetry of all of them, of my blocks, of seeing the squares cascade down. Now a couple more things about this. You change the number of strips and you get bigger blocks. You are going to remember again how many strips, no matter how many strips you have, you are sewing long, if you sew five, you are going to cut five to make a block. So this is a really cool and fun way to put them together because you just sew them into a tube and take them apart at each step, you know, just cascading the seams down.

Now I also have to admit to you that when I started separating them I made some mistakes. You know I got it and I was like, Wait, it's not like that, it doesn't fit anywhere. And that's why it's so easy. You will simply re-stitch the seam and then separate it where you are supposed to separate it. You know, don't stress about it because I didn't do it perfect the first time either because I feel a little challenged in that sense. So this is a great project, an easy way to put together this type of cascading strip.

And we hope you enjoyed this MSQC Crossing Paths quilt

tutorial

.