You know how your looking around on the internet and you might be on Pinterest, a magazine website or a blog post and you see a particular quilt pattern that you really love and you bookmark that webpage and tell yourself, "one day I will do that quilt, it's awesome!" and within a week or so you forget all about it?
Yeah, we've all done it, don't lie. Anyway, I was going back through my bookmarked webpages basically cleaning out what I don't want anymore and I found this Four Patch Charm Quilt from Tamarack Shack. I bookmarked this quilt years ago and I since I re-discovered it, I decided to get my backside in gear and get it done. It's a simple quilt yet very interesting, which I think is it's appeal. Tamarack Shack was also kind enough to put up a PDF file with instructions on how to make the quilt.
This quilt uses 96, 5" squares. So look for some charm packs or get your scrap fabric out and get sewing! I couldn't find any charm packs that I liked so I bought some fat quarters to cut up. Yes, this will make more cutting for me but cutting 96 squares isn't that bad. I decided to go with Gemstone Stonehenge gradation fabrics because of their rich color. I also bought 7.5 yards of bali batiks handpaints sunflower oyster fabric for the top, binding and backing from Fabric.com. If you've never shopped on Fabric.com, I urge you to check it out. I love saving the fabrics to the design wall and when I have enough for whatever project I'm making, they're all saved in one place. I just hope they're all still available when I do want to buy them.
This quilt is a bunch of half square triangles which I didn't realize just looking at the photo of the quilt but the instructions on the PDF are very clear on how to go about making this quilt so I won't reiterate what's on the PDF.
I washed all the fabric, iron everything and got cutting my fat quarters into 5" squares. Next, I cut up my background fabric according to the instructions and once I had all my pieces together I started sewing.
I didn't have any trouble sewing the blocks together or cutting them on the diagonal but I did find I had a lot more trouble with the squares being stretchy after cutting everything on the bias. I had more trouble than what I'd of liked to have had anyway so if your a beginner sewer try to have a more experienced sewer around to help out. Another area I had some issues with was the bulk at some meeting points. Some were super thick to try to sew through so I trimmed out the bulk a few times but some were still really thick to have to deal with.
I laid out my squares according to the diagram and got sewing. I was very pleased with how everything was coming together but I will say making sure your seams lined up correctly was a bit difficult. I consider my sewing skills to be intermediate and I had some trouble and some of them look pretty "off" in some places but I can't help it. I'll rack that up to learning experience and I'm sure I'll do better the second time around. I also noticed after I got borders sewn on that I have 2 blocks out of position. Needless to say it's a glaring mistake in the quilt top and I'm going to have to fix it. It's really frustrating because I checked each row after sewing them together if everything looked okay but even checking it, I still messed up.
Anyway, I completed this quilt top working on it for a few hours each day and got it done in about 6 days. I'm sure if you really wanted to get it done quickly you can do it in a long weekend. I'm hoping to get it quilted soon and I'll post a photo of the quilt completely done in the coming months. My quilt top measured 63x69" when finished to give you an idea of size.
All an all a really nice quilt and the instructions were clear.
Yeah, we've all done it, don't lie. Anyway, I was going back through my bookmarked webpages basically cleaning out what I don't want anymore and I found this Four Patch Charm Quilt from Tamarack Shack. I bookmarked this quilt years ago and I since I re-discovered it, I decided to get my backside in gear and get it done. It's a simple quilt yet very interesting, which I think is it's appeal. Tamarack Shack was also kind enough to put up a PDF file with instructions on how to make the quilt.
This quilt uses 96, 5" squares. So look for some charm packs or get your scrap fabric out and get sewing! I couldn't find any charm packs that I liked so I bought some fat quarters to cut up. Yes, this will make more cutting for me but cutting 96 squares isn't that bad. I decided to go with Gemstone Stonehenge gradation fabrics because of their rich color. I also bought 7.5 yards of bali batiks handpaints sunflower oyster fabric for the top, binding and backing from Fabric.com. If you've never shopped on Fabric.com, I urge you to check it out. I love saving the fabrics to the design wall and when I have enough for whatever project I'm making, they're all saved in one place. I just hope they're all still available when I do want to buy them.
This quilt is a bunch of half square triangles which I didn't realize just looking at the photo of the quilt but the instructions on the PDF are very clear on how to go about making this quilt so I won't reiterate what's on the PDF.
I washed all the fabric, iron everything and got cutting my fat quarters into 5" squares. Next, I cut up my background fabric according to the instructions and once I had all my pieces together I started sewing.
I didn't have any trouble sewing the blocks together or cutting them on the diagonal but I did find I had a lot more trouble with the squares being stretchy after cutting everything on the bias. I had more trouble than what I'd of liked to have had anyway so if your a beginner sewer try to have a more experienced sewer around to help out. Another area I had some issues with was the bulk at some meeting points. Some were super thick to try to sew through so I trimmed out the bulk a few times but some were still really thick to have to deal with.
I laid out my squares according to the diagram and got sewing. I was very pleased with how everything was coming together but I will say making sure your seams lined up correctly was a bit difficult. I consider my sewing skills to be intermediate and I had some trouble and some of them look pretty "off" in some places but I can't help it. I'll rack that up to learning experience and I'm sure I'll do better the second time around. I also noticed after I got borders sewn on that I have 2 blocks out of position. Needless to say it's a glaring mistake in the quilt top and I'm going to have to fix it. It's really frustrating because I checked each row after sewing them together if everything looked okay but even checking it, I still messed up.
Anyway, I completed this quilt top working on it for a few hours each day and got it done in about 6 days. I'm sure if you really wanted to get it done quickly you can do it in a long weekend. I'm hoping to get it quilted soon and I'll post a photo of the quilt completely done in the coming months. My quilt top measured 63x69" when finished to give you an idea of size.
All an all a really nice quilt and the instructions were clear.
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