How to Make a Secret Garden Mini Quilt - Free Quilting Tutorial

Last year we made The Secret Garden quilt and today we're making it mini!

You know me and you know I love a mini project. So I was super excited to shrink this one down and bring it to you. It features the Kona Color of the Year Julep. That's this beautiful green color in the middle. So I just kept with all Kona solids for this. This is blueberry and white. So let me show you how to make it.

It comes together super fast! You are going to need a half a yard of that Julep, and 3/4 of a yard of both your white and your blue. Then you're also going to need two packages of these pre-cut 2 and 1/2 inch squares - just to save you a lot of time and cutting! So let's go ahead and dive right into this.

So just like The Secret Garden quilt I made last year, this is made up of three components. So let's go look at the quilt. We have this X block, the bar blocks and then the solid square in the middle. So let's go ahead and start with the X blocks.

You're going to take those packages of pre-cut 2 and 1/2 inch squares
and you're going to need four per X unit. So we'll just take a few off the
top here. Then you're going to need two 1 and 1/2 inch blue squares for each one of your 2 and 1/2 inch squares. So we are going to set those just like this and snowball opposite corners. What that means is we're just going to sew point to point and point to point and we'll repeat that four times to make our little X block.

So let's go ahead and bring this over here. I am just going to make sure this is lined up right in that outer corner, just like so, and then I'll put my needle down. Make sure that this point is lined up with the needle and then this point closest to me is on the red line of my diagonal seam tape. And this is really easy to just chain piece one after the other, so if you wanted to do all of the blocks for your quilt you could just insert them one after the other here, just like so. But I have a few ready to go, so I'm going to go ahead and cut this thread turn it around and we'll add our squares to the opposite side. So again just lining it up right with that outside corner and one more. Okay so now we can come over here and cut these apart. You can use your scissors or your rotary cutter. Then we're going to trim off our excess fabric here and just leave our quarter inch seam allowance. So you can see you're going to need a lot of these for this little quilt, so it's a great opportunity to just sit and chain piece and get them all done.

There we go! So let's go ahead and press these now over at the iron. So I just like to roll these back just like so. And by using this method your square should stay 2 and 1/2 inches. That's what we're looking for. All right. So now I have a few more done here. So you can see we want to put these together so that our white is touching and we can form our little X blocks. So I'm just going to put these right sides together and we'll sew down here and then we'll add it to these two that I've already sewn to complete our little four patch.

So we'll just line these up under here. When you're working with mini projects it's not harder, it's just smaller. But you do want to be really careful to keep your seams consistent because the difference in your seams will really add up and be noticeable on these small projects. Let's go ahead and roll this back here since I have the iron right next to me. And now we can just place these right sides together and finish up our little four patch here. So take a few stitches, make sure that middle is going to nest nicely, can just feel that under my fingers there, sew to that point and line up my ends.

All right, there we go. We'll give that a good press and our X block is complete! Super simple. So now we can set that aside and move on to our bar block.

So in order to make that, we are going to cut some 1 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2 inch rectangles from our background fabric. I have that ready to go. Then we're also going to cut some 2 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2 inch rectangles from our blue and we are just going to sew one of these to either side. Just nice straight seams and when it's finished it looks just like this. And that is as simple as it is to make that block. Super, super easy!

So now those are the two blocks that need to be pieced within the quilt. Then you're also going to grab your Julep fabric and you're going to cut that into 4 and 1/2 inch squares. And now this quilt is all in the layout, so let's go ahead and get started with that.

So we are going to start. Our first row is an X and a bar block and an X. And then our next row we're going to come in with a bar block but instead
of being horizontal we're going to rotate it. And then we'll come in with that Julep and our bar block. And then we would just continue in this exact same pattern to make our quilt.

So let's go ahead and look at the quilt behind me we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, nine blocks across by nine down and that frames up this quilt
beautifully. It ends up 36x 36 so it's a great size for a baby quilt. I used
this beautiful Baptist fan pattern for the quilting and I use some of that Julep on the back, which I just think is so bright and happy. I did want to show you one more idea, since we have this solid square in the middle. So we embroidered this little block. Wouldn't this be so cute to just set in and have little flowers surrounded by our piecing?

I think that turns out so good! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Secret Garden mini quilt and I'll see you next time on At Home.