I’m quilting along with the Fat Quarter Shop’s Clementine Quilt Along! Are you?!
This year’s quilt along is super cute, and it benefits St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The first block is Watermelon Wheel, and you can get each pattern on the 25th of each month. They only suggest you make a $5 donation to St. Jude’s for each pattern you download. Here’s my version of the block:
Here’s my version of Watermelon Wheel. I think I’m going to absolutely love using my Tula Pink fat quarters in this quilt.
After doing an inventory of my fabric collection and realizing I have over 600 yards of fabric, I’ve decided this year is Twenty-Stash-Teen. I’m on a serious fabric-buying diet – as in I’m not allowed to buy any fabric this year – so I’m excited about the challenge of doing a project this big with only stash fabric.
The pattern calls for three fat quarters of eight different fabrics. Since I don’t have that on hand, I decided to finally cut into some Tula Pink fat quarters I’ve been hoarding for years. And I’m lucky that I thought to buy basics in bulk before this year’s stash goal! The background is Kona Snow. I’m really happy with how block one turned out.
Tips and Tricks
One of the things I love about quilt along projects is that they give you a chance to learn or perfect different skills. Each month I’ll share tips on how to complete each block based on my own experience with it.
My four fat quarters layered and ready to be cut.
Since the directions have you cut your pieces out of a single layer of fat quarter, I decided to stack my fabrics on top of each other so I could cut from all four fabrics at once. This reduced my cutting time by 75 percent!
Stack the sewn strips on top of each other to cross cut pieces from two strips at a time.
To cross cut your pieces from the sewn strips, I stacked two strips together and cross cut the pieces two at a time. This reduced cutting for this step by 50 percent.
The directions call for pressing seams open, but I pressed mine to the side. Looking back, I wish I had followed those directions. Some of the seams got a little bulky, and I had to really slow down to feed them through the machine evenly.
One More Thing
What would a project be without a furry quilting supervisor? Here is my Mitchell guarding my pieces as I was drawing the diagonal lines on them. Isn’t he the cutest?!
My quilting supervisor.
Are you quilting along too? Share your finished block in the Facebook group and tag your pictures #clementinequiltalong on Twitter and Instagram. Tag me so I can see your blocks too! I’m @loveofthread on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I can’t wait to see them!