Fat Quarter Frenzy Begins with Meet Me In St. Louis!

 

Hi, all!

Welcome to this year's tutorial series, Fat Quarter Frenzy!  Born from the inspiration of my oldest granddaughter, who so kindly pointed out that I had a "butt-load of fat quarters", I'll be sharing six simple quilt tutorials, all using fat quarters as their source of fabric.  Of course, you can use yardage or scraps if you choose, but the tutorials are written using fat quarters.

If you're like me, you love to buy fat quarter bundles because they are such a fun way to get your hands on a full fabric line.  All those beautiful fabrics just waiting to be turned into quilts - but sometimes they just languish away on the shelf, looking pretty but not much else. So let's use them!

A word here about fat quarters!  As I've been prepping my own for use in these tutorials, I have found serious discrepancies in the sizes of fat quarters.  By definition, a fat quarter should be 18" x 20-22", but I have found many of my bundled fat quarters to be only approximately 17" wide when squared up.  So for purposes of these tutorials, I am assuming that fat quarters are 17" x 20".  Yours may be larger than that, and I trust that you will find good use for any scraps that are left over!

With that being said, let's get started with our first quilt tutorial, which I call "Meet Me In St. Louis" in honor of its classic block, the St. Louis 16-patch.  I was not familiar with this block before, but it certainly lends itself to fat quarters, as you will see that there is very little waste.

Meet Me In St. Louis

A Fat Quarter Friendly Quilt

Materials:

16 Fat Quarters (FQ) measuring (squared up) a minimum of 17” x 20”:

8 light (L) FQ, 8 dark (D) FQ *or two contrasting colors can be used*

Cutting:

Square up your FQ, using the selvage edge as your constant straight.  Line it up on the straight of your cutting mat, then trim the right and left edges to straight.

Leaving the FQ in place on the mat, cut four strips 4.25” wide by 20”+ long.  

Repeat for all 16 FQs.  You should now have 32 llght strips and 32 dark strips.

Assembly: 

Divide your strips into 16 sets, pairing two identical light (L) strips with two identical dark (D)  strips. 

Assemble strip sets, alternating the strips in a LDLD pattern.   I recommend starting sewing from the selvage ends so the sets are basically straight on that end for economy’s sake.

Press seams towards the dark strips.  (If you are using contrasting colors, press toward the same color on all strip sets)

Crosscut the strip sets in the following manner:  laying your strip set with the strips running horizontal on the mat, line up the straight bottom with the straight on your mat.  Cut off the selvage edges.  

Then cut the strip set into 4 4.25” wide block strips.  Repeat for all strip sets, being sure to keep the block strips from each strip set together.

Take the four block strips and arrange them in a checkerboard 16-patch pattern.  Your seams should nest into each other.  Assemble the block.  Repeat for all 16 blocks.

 Arrange your 16-patch blocks and  assemble your quilt!

Yields one approximately 60” square quilt.

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And there you have it - the first of six tutorials for this year's series, Fat Quarter Frenzy!  I hope you'll enjoy making these quilts as much as I have.  Most are quick and simple, perfect for comfort quilts to give away - and hopefully they'll help you use up some stray fat quarters if you also have a "butt-load" of them!

See you next Sunday with another fun quilt tutorial!

Hugs!

Sarah