Make a "Spice Rack" Quilt with Jenny!

Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I”ve got a great project for you today. On the cover of our baby issue of Block magazine there is a little quilt called Sugar & Spice. And it’s so cute. And I wanted to do a tutorial and just show you how that could be made a little bit bigger. And so today’s tutorial we’re Color Wash Woolies flannel. And look at these gorgeous flannels. They are so beautiful. And you can see them in the quilt behind me. I just love them. I love the flannel idea, it’s so soft. We also used from that same line the dark navy. And that made all of our chevron blocks and our outer border. And for that you’re going to need, you’re going to need a yard and a half of that contrast fabric. You’re also going to need a yard of background fabric. And we have used Essex Linen leather. And I mean it’s such a good texture to combine with the flannel. It makes it really fun. And that does this first border and all of our little chevron blocks.

So for this quilt what we did was we left our flannel squares whole. So let me show you how that works. Let me pull a few out here. It’s hard to scoot flannel out because it’s, they kind of just stick to each other. So let me show you these flannel squares right here. Gosh this is so delicious I love how soft it is. And you see how they’re just in between everything like this. And so we just decided to make the chevron blocks bigger. And they’re just half square triangles to fit. So what we did was we cut two 3 ½ inch strips like this and cut squares out of them. So I’ve got some of those squares over here. This is what they’re going to look like. And then we’re going to combine a flannel square with the Essex linen square right here. And we are going to do this to it. So we’re going to draw a line and sew on either side. That’s one of the ways to make half square triangles and that’s the way we chose for this. So literally we’re just going to draw a line, sew a quarter of an inch on either side and then cut this in half like this and iron them open. Just like this.

So once you get your squares all ironed open we’re going to need to square these. And we’re going to need to trim them down because we have to make these fit our five inch squares. So they are going to get trimmed down to 2 ¾. And I have some of those already done right here. And what we’re going to do, is the first row right here, because we’re making these little chevron blocks, we’re going to put the colors together and on the second row we’re going to put the white together like this. And so it just makes the cool little chevron block and let’s go to the sewing machine and sew this together because this is really the only block you sew. The charm squares are already the right size, the perfect size for it. And we’re going to go ahead and sew these a quarter of an inch right down the side here. And then I’m going to sew another one a quarter of an inch. And this time we’re sewing the Essex linen fabric together. That’s a little hard for me to say, Essex linen. It just wants to slur on my tongue. Alright so now I”m going to just finger press these open and then I’m going to sew the top to the bottom to complete our chevron block. Did I say how much I love flannel? Flannel is so forgiving and it’s just so comfy. I love the nice feel of flannel. Alrighty. So then we’re going to press this open and then I’m going to go ahead and set these seams. And then roll it back.

Alright so let’s talk about how these go together because we’re going to come back to the quilt back here. And these are actually this top row right here. So we have a solid square right here like this that we’re going to sew to this. This is going to match up perfectly and we’re going to do a row. So this first row and you’ll want to look at the diagram on this. All of our chevrons go up like this. On the second row, the first one and the last one go out and all the rest go up. So it’s making this, you know it’s making this frame around these gorgeous flannel squares. So then the third row, of course every other row you’re going to alternate and you’re going to have your flannel in here. And then your chevrons come this way and this one up. So then it makes this square. And it makes the bigger squares on the corner and it just all goes together so cool and really the only block you have to worry about is this chevron block. And so it just makes a really cool, really fun quilt. And it goes together so quickly because you just sew it to the charms. So this quilt is really fun to make bigger. And obviously it’s darling tiny. So since this one is a little bigger than this one, this one is called Sugar & Spice, we’re calling this one Spice Rack. And also because of the fabric lends itself to that a little more. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Spice Rack quilt from the MSQC.