YEE-HAW! It's a Tutorial

Since finding out that I'm having twin boys, I have decided to decorate the nursery with a cowboy/western theme. I had many plans of making all their bedding + more, but now that I'm on bed rest, I'm not really supposed to be spending hours bent over my sewing machine creating cute little baby things. Fortunately, before being put on bed rest I was able to crank out these little quilts.

I cheated a little bit by buying the hankerchief patchwork fabric. It looks like I spent lots of time cutting out those little squares and piecing them all together, but alas I found a way to skip all that work. :)

What You'll Need:

-1 yd. of fabric for the front of the quilt

-1 yd. of fabric for the back of the quilt 

-1 yd of quilt batting

-Thread

 

Suggestion: I would wash the fabric you purchase before starting this project so that if you need to wash it later on down the road you don't have to worry about it shrinking!

 

Step 1: 

Lay the 1 yd of fabric that you intend to use for the front of your quilt on top of your quilt batting and cut the batting the match the piece of fabric. 

Step 2: 

Make sure the fabric and batting is smoothed completely flat. Pin the fabric to the batting. Make sure to pin all over to keep the fabric and batting from getting puckers later on. 

Step 3:

Lay the fabric for the back on top of the front and quilt batting pieces. The front and back pieces should be right sides together, then pin along the edges. 

Step 4: 

Sew at 5/8" all along the quilt edge through all thicknesses. On one side leave an opening of about 12" so that you can turn the quilt right side out. 

(Please excuse the terrible lighting in these pics)

Step 5:

Turn quilt right side out. Be very careful not to poke yourself with the pins that are holding the front and batting pieces together. It's a little tricky.

Step 6:

Poke out the corners of the quilt making sure you get a nice point. I used a pencil to do this. Press the edges of the quilt making sure they are very flat. At the opening on the side fold the excess fabric in and press. 

Step 7: 

Sew right along the edge of the opening making sure you catch both sides of the quilt to close the opening completely. I recommend using a lot of pins to pin the opening shut and to make sure both the front and back of the quilt line up properly. 

Step 8: 

Start at one corner of the quilt and topstitch  5/8" all around the quilt making one big rectangle. This is another one of my quilt cheating ways to keep from having to use binding. 

Step 9: 

This step might look different for you depending on the fabric you are using. Here is what I did- in order to attach all three pieces (the front, the batting, the back) and keep the quilt fabric flat, I sewed along the lines of my squares all the way across my quilt. I sewed at every 2 rows of squares. I'm sure there are many different ways you could choose to do this, but this method worked well for me. The only challenging part was making sure the quilt didn't get bunched up at the end.

 

Step 10: Take out all the pins and you should have a nice new baby quilt.

 

So there you have it. These quilts were actually a lot of fun to make and didn't take very long. Once I finished one, it was pretty easy to whip out a second one. I can't wait to finish the whole nursery so I can show it off. It's gonna be pretty darn cute.