Strip Quilt as You Go Idea Stitch and Flip

When my mom passed away, I knew that I wanted to make quilts from her clothes for my siblings, but had no idea how emotional it would be to cut her clothes into pieces.  But once I had the first quilt done, I knew I was doing the right thing.  They are just small, lap size throws but I love them.  I haven't quilted in years, so I tried to keep the pattern simple and used the quilt as you go method.

I only used her cotton fabric clothes.  I started by cutting all the seams, collars and cuffs off, but I saved them for a future project.  I pressed the cloth pieces once they were trimmed. I have an AccuCut GrandMark die cutting machine which also uses AccuQuilt Studio dies so it was easy to cut the fabric into 2 1/2" strips using the strip cutter die, 500 strips actually!  I estimated it would take 125 strips per quilt which I think is pretty close.  Some strips were short and some were long depending on if they were cut from shirts or pants.  I kept the strips from each garment together and placed them side by side on my counter. That made it easy to just pick up a strip and sew it to the next piece and not repeat pieces too closely together. Once I had 125 strips stitched end to end I started sewing the quilt. 

I will attempt to tell you how I made this quilt, but I am not a professional pattern maker/writer but maybe you will get the idea and run with it.  Feel free to ask questions and I will attempt to answer them.  I have seen the general idea of the this quilt called many things, Quilt as You Go,  Flip and Stitch, and using the backing for the binding.  I just combined all three ideas.

I trimmed the selvages off the muslin backing making it 43"x60".  I cut the batting 40"x57" so it would be 1 1/2" smaller all the way around the muslin backing so once the strips are stitched, the muslin can be folded up and used for the binding.  I marked the 1 1/2" area around the perimeter of the backing so I wouldn't stitch in that space or let the batting slip into that area.

I placed the batting on top of the muslin backing and hand basted, the two together being careful to keep the batting inside the marked area away from the 1 1/2" marked edges of muslin that is going to be folded up for the binding.  I am pretty sure this is not traditional quilting, but it worked and was easy.  And I wouldn't attempt this without doing the hand basting as the batting will shift and you won't end up with your 1 1/2" muslin perimeter to use for the binding.

Then for the quilt as you go, I started with the first strips 6 inches below the right upper corner angled down to 6 inches above the lower left corner, sort of dividing the quilt in half to make it easier to go through the throat of my Janome 15000 (which has a huge throat area and could have handled the entire quilt).  But I did half the quilt one way then flipped it and sewed the other half.  Make sure to mark the angle you want.

Lay two strips right sides facing and stitch on one edge from one side of the sandwich backing and batting to the lower side following the angle.  Press stitch line to set, then press the strip open.  Then lay the next strip on top of the last strip and stitch, press stitches to set and then press open.  Repeat until finished. Once you have stitched all the pieces to the bottom edge, go back to the first strip and lay your fabric on that strip and start sewing the other side. Repeat until finished.

To make the binding, just turn it under, press, pin and machine stitch.

Quilt as you go is fun, easy and fast!