Handmade Christmas Quilt Along: Step One Fabric

I’m so excited at the great response to my Quilt Along!! Thank you! Let’s get going!!

First of all let me say that the purpose of this Quilt Along is to make a quilt for someone you love as a gift this Christmas (or other winter Holiday) AND to get the quilt made BEFORE Christmas with enough time to spare that you’re not stressing out….

Soooo if you already have a project in mind OR you’ve got something you’ve been dying to finish… go for it and play along!!  You don’t need to do what I’m suggesting here, I’m just offering tips and ideas for those that might not be sure where to start. Also if you want to just copy what I’m doing here with my kids quilts please feel free to do so! That’s kinda the purpose of me sharing ideas with ya’ll on this blog.

Handmade Christmas Quilt AlongAs I’ve been thinking about how to blog about this, I decided it’s best to break up the Quilt Along steps into several blog posts, rather than one GIANT blog post…

To begin- if you’re going to make a quilt your going to need some fabric. So today I’m going to talk about Fabric Selection, then next week will be design ideas. With lots of links and photos for inspiration for you guys.

Okay, you may ask “how do you select fabric when you don’t know what your doing yet?”…. well my design process is a bit odd in that I  usually get the idea for a quilt/craft first from the materials. I’m inspired by the fabric. Then I decide the best way to display them.

Let me explain:

You know how you “pop” into quilt/fabric stores all year. Maybe when your on vacation or your local quilt shop is having a killer sale?  You go, but unless you’ve got a specific project in mind it’s hard to figure out what to buy.  So this is what I do… I collect 1/2-1 yd cuts of fabrics that I LOVE…. then later when I find a specific project for them it’s usually pretty easy to find some “neutral” fabrics (i.e. dots, stripes, solids) that coordinate.

This year I knew that I was going to be making quilts for my kids for Christmas, so as I shopped I tried to collect fabrics (mostly novelty prints) that reminded me of each of my kids.. Keeping in mind a specific color scheme for each kid.

This summer while shopping in SLC,  I found this adorable VW bugs and bikes print at a quilt store there. It immedialtey reminded me of my oldest daughter since she turned 16 this year. It was a great print with a cool color scheme. So as I shopped for her fabirc this year I thought “pink, oragne, black and girly”.

I picked up some of the novelty prints then came home and shopped my stash and found what I think are enough fabrics to complete her quilt.  If your interested I got 1 yd each of the cars/bikes print.  If you want to make a basic blocks quilt, you can get approx. 30 6×6 blocks from one yard of fabric. Assuming you want your quilt to be 55×66 (I’ll explain why I picked that size next post). You’ll need 120 blocks which is approx. 4 yards of fabric in total… Did I lose you? If so don’t stress it will make more sense next week.

So your first task is to
ONE: Decide on a color scheme
TWO: Start collecting fabric

 

Other Quilt Along Posts:

Quilt Along

Fabric

Step One

Design

Start Cutting

Cutting Part 2

Start Sewing

Backing And Batting

Progress Report

Machine Quilting

Last Update

Finished Quilts

Patchwork Quilt

 

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