I don’t know about you, but in last two quilting classes, a ‘miracle’ occurred. I had literally NO IDEA that all you do to make this dazzling number of tiny pieces that make up a quilt block are simply small cut squares from a larger 2×2 quilt block. All that our quilting instructor Janeen van Niekerk did was rotating 2 out of the 4 pieces, and voila: a fantastic quilt pattern occurred. OK. Call me simple. I just did not know. And I thought it was beautiful.
So, like you, I am curious to see what kind of ‘amazing’ technique Janeen will reveal today to help us take the next step in making our beginners quilt. Today, she’ll be talking about creating quilt rows. I know you are a silent bunch, but tell me what you think of the class in the comments below.
If you are arriving here without having seen any of the 5 prior classes, do not panic. I have posted the links to all the classes at the very end of this article for your use.
Happy Quilting, everyone!
Tips for Beginners #6
Making Quilt Rows
By Janeen van Niekerk
(I am assuming that you just finished class 5 of this free online course for beginning quilters)….
Now that we have our 9 quilt blocks all made up and trimmed to the right size (i.e. 11,5″), we can start to put our mini-quilt top together. The top is the front of the quilt you are working on.
Each quilt row will be made up of 3 of these finished quilt blocks.
Making a Quilt Row
Pin and sew the 3 blocks together in a row. Make sure that your seams are facing opposite sides to the next row. (Luckily there is no having to make sure of points to joins or match up with the rows. This would be the case if you were to make an advanced-level quilt).
In the picture below. note how quilt blocks #1, 2 and 3 all line up to make a continuous quilt pattern in the row. Pretty, eh?!
Now, make three of these quilt rows (i.e. strips of joined blocks).
Joining Quilt Rows
Once you have 3 quilt rows, then you can start to join the first two rows to each other, to get the resulting quilt motive below made up of 6 quilt blocks. Once you sewn the first and second row together, go ahead and do the second and third row too.
How to Make Nesting Seams
This is a super-important quilting tip: Make sure that you ‘nest’ your seams in these horizontal rows and join up the seams where the blocks meet. Do the same for the second and third horizontal row too.
How to Nest Seams
Here you can see where I made sure that my seams were nested and joined together at their seams. Pin your work together because the fabric will move around as you are sewing and then your joints won’t match up. We want to have good crisp joins so that our top will look really neat.
Like so:
Sewn Quilted Blocks in Rows, and Rows onto Rows
(Do you see the 9 blocks, or do you see the overall design?)
Now, see?! We are already almost done with the top. Next time we will measure, cut our remaining fabric and attach our borders.
Press with the iron onto each seam so that it is lying down flat. You can also press the front of the mini-quilt and make sure that each block is flat and beautiful.
‘Til next time,
Janeen
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Want to begin sewing quilts with me?
Join our free online quilting workshops, which you can take at your leisure, any time you want.
Free Quilting Patterns & Tutorials & Classes in this quilting course by Janeen van Niekerk:
- Class #1: Fussy cutting ~ How to Make a Quilt: Free Quilting Beginners Class.
- Class #2: Quilting Tools – What you’ll need as a beginner.
- Class #3 : How to Choose & Work with Quilting Fabric.
- Class #4: How to Read & Work with a Quilt Pattern.
- Class #5: Creating a Finished Quilt Block .
- Class #6: How to Make Quilt Rows – from finished blocks.
- Class #7: How to add borders to your quilt
- Class #8 : How to finish a quilt: add backing, batting and how to bind a quilt.
- Class #9 : How to Make Quilt Blocks more Exciting.
- Class #10 : How to Make a Modern Lap Quilt.
- Class #11 : How to Make a Modern Lap Quilt, the next steps.
- Class #12: How to finish a Quilt :: Modern Lap Quilt.
About Quilting Instructor Janeen van Niekerk
Our latest news of quilt making instructor Janeen van Niekerk is that she has just launched a brand new paper piecing magazine.
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Quilt artist Janeen van Niekerk is an avid quilter. In particular, she’s an accomplished paper piecing designer. She does it all with a passion.
Janeen’s prolific range of hand-made quilts (she takes commissions for personalized, stylish portrait quilts), as well as her unique quilt patterns (think quilts featuring safari animals and trees, or kids toys) are inspired by her environs; she lives in sunny Pretoria in South Africa, with her husband and kids.
Janeen offers her quilts designs & paper piecing patterns for individual sale Out of Janeen’s 230+ quilt patterns for sale, these are my top 5 Paper Piecing Quilt Patterns, Animals and Flowers. All really beautiful!!
Janeen van Niekerk (spelled by some as Janine van Niekerk) is also part of the Free Block of the Month -club, offering a free paper piecing quilt block pattern, each month. Check it out here:
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Quilting Pattern Library & Other Training Courses
This gorgeous owl quilt pattern is both included in one of Janeen’s books as well as being available for individual sale. Don’t you just love this quilt design?
The owl and all Janeen’s other patterns are for sale here at Craftsy. BTW. Crafty also has other quilting, sewing and other craft workshops, which I encourage you to check out, by clicking either the banner below, or the link above.
Or,… continue your journey with Quilting patterns, tutorials and ideas featured here at FineCraftGuild.com (beyond Janeen’s quilting course).
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