Make a "Serendipity" Quilt

Hi. It's Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

I've got something really, really fun to show you today. I'm calling it my serendipity quilt because you really get two blocks from the one cut. I've been loving combining patterns together. Now, this is a quilt I put together, and it's basically the Xs and Os block, again, but what you're going to do is you're going to use strips for your middle, and your Xs and Os are on the outside.

So let me show you how I did that. I mean, it just becomes so cute. Can you see the X pattern running through here? And we put the reds together in the center. I mean, it's just so cute. This is another one of those that I just couldn't even wait to quilt it. I just had to get on here and show you guys.

Okay. So let me show you how we do this. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to sew three strips together. I did light, medium -- no. I did light, dark, medium, but you can do it however you want, but you're going to sew strip sets together. So here's a strip set, and what we're going to do then is we're going to cut them into blocks. So however tall it is, that's how wide we're going to cut this. And this works out to be six-and-a-half, but you could do this with any size strip sets you wanted. So we're going to start here.

Now, the one thing to remember on this is that you always -- when you start to sew your blocks together, you want them all in the same direction. So I put mine all in a pile like this so all the lights were at the bottom. And then, for this, I used -- this is a Countdown to Christmas jelly roll and a Countdown to Christmas -- I used a charm pack sized square. I didn't, actually, use a charm pack. I cut yardage because I wanted all my reds to be in the middle. You can see. Here's your strip set, and then we've got all the reds that come together to form another block.

So I took half-yard cuts of these and cut them into five-inch blocks, but you could use a charm pack for this because it's the same size. So then what we're going to do is we're going to put this on here. And you can see I've ironed, ironed this in half like this so this gives us our sew line because we're going to have to sew down this line right here.

And this is a pretty big block to use on here, and for that person -- you all know how I feel about waste. I hate the wasting, so I'm going to show you what I do with this. I think it's the quick draw of the sewing world. So let's head on over to the sewing machine and let me show you how we do this.

Okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and sew down this creased line that we've made, just follow it with our presser foot. Then we're going to lift this up, and we're going to whip this around, and we're going to set our foot back down and sew a quarter of an inch from the middle line, and we use our -- we use this as our line to sew the next line.

So then what we're going to do is we're going to bring this out here -- whoops. I can't seem to find my cutter. There we go -- and I'm going to get my scissor, right here, and I'm going to come over here to the ironing board, and I'm just going to trim this off. Now, you have to do this really carefully. You can use a rotary cutter, if you want, but you want to trim right in between these two lines like this, and then we're going to press this open right here, and that's the first side of our block.

So let's go ahead and add the other side. We've got another block here that's been pressed in half. Let's repress that and get a really firm crease. And then we're going to lay this on here, this side, so you're putting your blocks on opposite corners, and we're going to go ahead and-- if you feel like you need to pin it, you can pin it. I'm just going to line this up, take it over to my sewing machine and sew down that crease.

So what we're going to do is we're just going to make sure this is laid up straight, and we're just going to sew right down that crease. And then, again, I like to have my needle down. I like to pick up my presser foot and whip this around to the outside, and we're just going to sew right back. So, very quickly, with two little seams, we've created two blocks.

So let's go ahead and cut this again, and I'll show you what we get. Okay. So we've cut that. Now we're going to press this open, and this is our block right here. You can see on here. This is this block right here. Okay.So your whites are going to come together, your greens are going to come together, and your reds are going to come together. And you're going to make a pile of those, and they're all going to the same direction with your white at the bottom. If you don't, you'll end up with blocks that go opposite ways, and you won't make your star points in the middle. So here's the serendipitous point. We have these two side pieces that otherwise would be waste, and you know how I feel about waste. I hate it. So we're going to come over here, and we're going to open these up, and look what we get when we open these up. We get this cute little block. Look at that. Because they're cut from opposite ends of the block, you end up with different fabrics on them, so there's all kinds of things we can do with this.

So we've got this one quilt top that we made just with our strips. And what I love, one of the things I love about this, is that when you put the corners on the blocks, it makes it look like you pieced diamonds to put in there, but we didn't do any of that little sewing. We just put the blocks on the corners, and it makes it look like you worked so hard, and you didn't.

So we can do that again with another block here. I'm going to kind of lay these on here so you can see how these go together. So here's this. I'm going to turn this over. There we go. Okay. So when you have this this way, then, again, you're going to put it together just like your Xs and Os block. You're going to sew -- let's make this -- there we go. You're going to sew your solids together or your reds together. No, we're not going to do that that way because we've got to put our whites. There we go. You would probably want to switch this out with another block.

I have a little stack of them over here, and let's see if we can do this then. There we go, just like that, so you see we make a different kind of X. So like, on this one, you'd have to put it this way, and then this will come together, and it will make those little center star points like that. And you're going to have four of them, and that will be your block, so that's this part right here. But, remember, we have the whole sides of our blocks that we haven't even touched yet, so let me show you some of those. I mean, because you're cutting two sides off of each block, you rapidly get a good-sized pile of these. So look at this little pile I have going here. These are all just the little squares from those, and these are them, and you can put them together.

I just want to show you some of these blocks I put together. These are the pinwheels they make. How cute is that? So you're going to, actually, get two little quilts from -- you're going to get two little quilts from one little jelly roll.

So let me show you how this goes together. So you're just going to just lay out your pinwheels like you would a normal pinwheel, and you put them together just like this, and it makes a secondary little pinwheel in the center. How adorable is that?

Let me show you a little bit how this quilt is going to look when we get it all together here. So let's put some of these out, and let's go ahead and make some of these up. And what's really fun about this is you get this whole pile of them, and you get a whole other quilt out of just the one square that you made because you whipped it around, and you sewed it together all in the same one. So you can see I have all these little pieces. I mean, this is going to be really cute with all these little pinwheels. Shall we put a few more?

And one thing that you really want to remember when you're doing this is just make sure that you always put your corners on the right bottoms because then you'll always have your pinwheels going the right way. I don't know if that made any sense, but when you -- when you first cut your strips, when your strips are this way, you make sure that
you have one color always at the bottom so that when you put your squares on, then everything is going to line up and be together.

All right. Let's put a couple more so you can just get a good look at this. Oh, these are kind of wrinkly. There we go. And one more over here. I just think this is really serendipity. Serendipity is when you find something really fun and unusual that you weren't expecting, and I wasn't expecting to get this really cute secondary quilt just out of this one block. So here is this one with its cute Xs, and here's this one with its pinwheels.

And we sure hope you've enjoyed this tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.