Quilt-along: The finishing touches

This is the last in a series of posts for the Urban Lattice Quilt-along. But don't fret, you can join us any time! Many are starting their quilts after the holidays. Be sure to visit our flickr group.

I'm super excited about all the great quilt tops that are showing up in our flickr group! Did you see the great scrappy Christmas top Adrianne is working on?

In this last post, I'm going to show you one way I like to assemble my blocks and press my seams. I'll also give you the measurements I used for quilting the concentric squares on the top of my quilt -- in case you want to do something similar. Really, how you quilt it is entirely up to you, as is the backing and binding.

Assembling your blocks

At this point you should have all your blocks finished and be ready to sew them all together. Pardon me if this seems really elementary but this is the step in which I find most tutorials lack detail.  When I first started quilting a few years ago, no one gave me advice on how to assemble a bunch of blocks together easily.  Being the novice that I was, I foolishly would sew each row from left to right, creating these long strips of blocks and then curse when the seams didn't easily line up with the next long strip of blocks. I don't know, maybe other people can sew tops together like that with success but I found it frustrating.

So here's how I usually tackle sewing a top together. You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

I'm not sure how easy this will be to explain so I'm hoping the above illustration helps. As you can see, my blocks are numbered and lettered. The colored lines represent where I sew blocks together and which direction I press the seam. If the colored line is to the left, I press my seams that direction and vice versa.

I first start by sewing one block to another block (green lines in this drawing).  In the case of this quilt, since I had five blocks across, I had to do one set of two blocks and one set of three blocks. As you can see in the illustration, I alternated the direction in which I press my seams from row to row.

Once that is done, I sew the sewn grouping of two blocks to the sewn grouping of two blocks below it, and so on and so forth (see blue lines in this drawing). The seams from the sewn blocks should "nest" together -- one to the right and the other to the left -- when you put right sides together. Sew and press.  Again, I alternate the direction in which I press my seams.

Then I take those groupings of four and six blocks and sew them together (see orange lines in this drawing). Alternate the direction you press the seams. You'll have three big chunks of your quilt sewn together at this point. Pin them and sew them together. Press the seams whatever direction you like! And...you're done.

Basting, Quilting, and Binding
If you have never basted a quilt, I suggest you read this. Otherwise, I'm going to assume you know how to baste and move on to marking the quilt top for quilting.

On Ted's quilt, I stitched in the ditch around the inner squares. Then I quilted 1.5" out from the edge of the inner squares and 3" out from the edge of the inner squares. I think it would look great pebble quilted too.



For binding, I think it looks best if your binding color is the same as your lattice strips but feel free to do what you think is best! If you need a tutorial on sewing on binding, I recommend this one or this one.

My quilt top is finished but has been shelved because of all my holiday sewing priorities. I hope to show you my finished quilt in January. In the meantime, keep the progress pictures coming and let me know if you have any questions about this tutorial. It was fun!

{For the full tutorial, see the Urban Lattice Quilt-Along tab under the header.}