Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Checker Board Picnic Quilt (the cheater way)

I honestly don't know if I can even call this a quilt because I cheated in every way possible.  Seriously.  Just wait till you see how.  To me, a quilt has batting, squares, and a backing, so I call it a quilt.  If you are a quilter, hide your eyes.  They may burn after you read this post.

Ok.  I started with a sketch of the a checker board.  I wanted it to be very large, so my pattern looked like this.  

1.  Since these are my final measurements I cut my squares to 9" x 9".  You'll need 32 squares of each color to make the checker board.  

2.  Once you get them cut, sew them together like you would any quilt using 1/2" seams.  Just be sure to keep the rows in order.  I layed the entire quilt out on the floor and sewed together the squares of one line at a time before sewing each row together.  

3.  Ok, here's where I cheated the first time.  I used Rae's method for her Cheater Quilt Binding (scroll down past the crayon quilt part and you'll see it).  To do this, I cut my batting slightly larger than my quilt front (about 65"x 65").  Then I cut my backing about 66" x 66" because my backing was too thick to fold over only 1/2" like Rae suggested.  I folded and ironed over the backing with the whole quilt spread out on the floor (my carpet was fine, but I would be careful when you first start).  Then I pinned it in place a sewed around the whole binding as close as I could get to the binding edge.  Since my backing was a heavy weight denim, I used jean colored thread so that it would not show and a jeans needle.

4.  Here's the second- much worse than the first- cheat.      


If you click on the picture above and look really closely at the corners, you will see some invisible thread.  I realized when I finished sewing the quilt together that it would be much to big/time consuming for me to machine quilt and I didn't want colored thread to show by hand quilting, so I decided to compromise.  On all four corners of each square, I sewed a button hole stitch to keep the front from coming apart from the backing.  I used invisible thread on the front and jean colored thread on the back.  It is nearly invisible when you look at it but does the job well.   

Here's another view:


And thats all I did.  Completely cheated, but I love how it turned out.  And I finished the whole thing in a few hours.  I think it could have dragged on much longer had I used traditional methods, but would probably look better.  I'm ok with this method though, since I'm not a 'purist'. 


It's already been put to good use...checkers and picnics.


Plus I'm loving how big it is.  Big enough to fit our growing family and big enough for us to lay on at the park.  Love it.



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5 comments:

  1. hiya , great post and great quilt i love that you cheated on the quilting ( i have minimal patience too ) even teh baby doesnt mind ...lol
    my niece had a cast like that too when she was only a few weeks old its amazing how it doesnt seem to bother them x thanks for sharing the tut
    xmaggiex

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  2. I love that you made checkers for it! What a fun quilt for the summer! I'm not a quilter either and want to try the cheater binding method on a quilt for my bed. I was going to try it on my first quilt (a little one for my little girl) but the edges were too uneven. I'm going to be much more careful when I baste and pin this time. . . .

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  3. I don't think that's cheating at all. Back in the "old days" that's how they bound their everyday quilts. My husband's grandma always does her scrap quilts that way. Sewing at the corners that way is a fancy way of making a tie quilt, also the way grandma does her scrap quilts. I think it's a lot of fun making a blanket for checkers.

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  4. LOVE this quilt!! The checkboard pattern is adorable and the size is awesome!

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  5. Wow, What a cute baby. I had club foot and had a cast for 10 months.

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