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Simple Life Pattern Company Cricut Maker Riley Blake Designs fabric quilt kits free quilting pattern rotary blade cutting machine daisy days fabric around we go quilt pattern pdf downloadable design space access sewing tutorial for quilting beginners fast easy how to diy sew chain piecing easy

Riley Blake Quilt Kits and your Cricut Maker. Part 2 of 3.

I am back for part 2 of our Riley Blake quilt kit for the Cricut Maker. If you missed Part 1, you can go check it out. Part one we choose our pattern and our fabric, modified the size to make it bigger and prep our fabric to cut on the Cricut Maker. So lets just dive in and pick up where we left off.

I finally decided on this layout. I am using the free “Around we go” baby quilt pattern and the Daisy Days quilt kit that is meant for a throw size quilt.If you read part 1, you will see how small the original quilt is (its a baby size quilt that I wanted to make bigger by adding more blocks). I really like the colors and the order of the colors in the diagram so ultimately, that is what I went for since I have the extra fabric from the bigger quilt kit.

This is a sponsored post, all opinions are mine. 

 

Riley Blake Designs fabric quilt kits for the cricut maker Daisy Days fabric for a throw size quilt using the free quilt pattern Around we go baby quilt pattern. How to modify and make it bigger. super fast easy beginner friendly sewing quilting pdf pattern design space how to tutorial guide quilt along. cutting machine for all materials and fabrics rotary cutter applique

 

Here is what you need to cut from your 6 prints and your white fabric:

 

I am almost done with the piecing, but I still haven’t decided 100% if I will be adding that yellow floral border. Here is the quilt kit I choose again, you can see I am not using all the prints so I can use those on a smaller project later on.

Riley Blake Designs fabric quilt kits for the cricut maker Daisy Days fabric for a throw size quilt using the free quilt pattern Around we go baby quilt pattern. How to modify and make it bigger. super fast easy beginner friendly sewing quilting pdf pattern design space how to tutorial guide quilt along. cutting machine for all materials and fabrics rotary cutter applique

For that that don’t know, Riley Blake Designs and Cricut teamed up to provide beautiful quilt kits and patterns, designed specifically for the Maker. There are two sizes of kits: Baby & Throw size. The throw size quilt kits features 6.75 yards of fabric making it so versatile. There are many patterns in Design Space that allow you to use the pre arranged fabric kits. This is great for those that have a hard time picking fabrics that coordinate, or for those that just want the ease of sewing a quilt without the headache of picking fabrics, arrangement and of course, cutting the fabrics. The adaptive tool system on the Maker includes a rotary blade, changing the way we can cut our projects. It can cut nearly any fabric with ease. The best part is getting extremely precise pieces for your projects.

I usually like to prep about 2 fabric grip mats  (I typically only use the 12″ x 24″ mats since I mostly do bigger / quilting projects) with the required fabric, then while that is cutting I keep prepping the other fabrics. On big projects, I might have a different sewing project I work on and just swap out the mats when I walk by. Also, as you can see I also listen to audio books when sewing… a lot… and totally forgot to take my earbuds out when doing this… oops. For this project I used 4 cutting mats (thats what I had on hand). As the project went on, they did loose a lot of their stickiness (they were all used mats to begin with) so all I did was run them under warm water and use my fingers to rub the lint/ strings off. Don’t worry if you don’t get all the strings off, that wont bother the Maker when cutting. I just needed to rejuvenate them a little to keep going. I do plan on having a “mat washing day” soon. I heard of some cleaners that work great but I haven’t tried them yet. My go to is usually warm water and if they are really bad, I grab my scraper (for putting on vinyl) and scrap the lint off the mat. If you don’t clean your mats every so often, when cutting near the edge the fabric might pull a little when cutting, making for a not so straight cut. So keep those mats clean and always place the plastic protective sheet back on them when they are not being used.

After my fabric is cut, I found it really handy to use my weeding tool to pull up the pieces of fabric. Its not hard to use your fingers either but this made it fast and fun.

Once you have all your fabrics cut out, we need to get our layout ready. Using the diagram above, you can lay your fabrics out in the order you need for each row. I typically only lay out one row at a time because, well…. 4 crazy kids running around…. haha. I start by laying them all out side by side like this….

Then I take the second one in and flip it over to the first one, right sides together. I continue to do that along the row. There will be 1 extra at the end that doesn’t have a match.

I then take the first stack (the left side) and stack it on the next one, then those two on to the next stack until I have them all scooped up. You don’t want to mess these up or get them out of order. Then I bring them to my sewing machine and start sewing the right side of each “set”.  I like to chain piece these to keep them in order and because it is faster. To chain piece, don’t clip your threads after sewing each one. Once you finish sewing one set, lift your presser foot and slide the next one under it and sew that one. Keep doing that until you have all your sets sew. Once you get the hang of it (maybe a few rows) you can zoom through these without having to check the layout much.

Then you can clip all your sets, being sure to keep them in order and if the print side is up, they should all be placed back that way into a new pile.

Now we are going to take our set of 2 pieces and make sets of 4 pieces (2 sets of 2). So just like before, grab set 2 and place it on top of set 1, right sides together and sew down the right side. Continue to do this until you don’t have anymore sets.

Continue to sew your sets until you have a row almost complete. You will have one extra block to sew on to the right side of the quilt. Sew that one on. I then press my row all to one side. It doesn’t matter which side since you can flip them. We want our seams to “nest” so if row 1 is pressed to the left, row 2 should be pressed to the right, each row alternating directions. This is SUPER important to me when sewing. By nesting the seams, your blocks will sew up way nicer  and your quilt top will be more “organized” when we go to quilt it. Just don’t skip this step…. take my word for it.

Now we can sew our rows together. Take row 1 and flip it over to row 2, right sides together. Pin EVERY seam intersection. Make sure your seams are nested (butted up next to each other). Take that to the machine and sew the rows together. Continue to do this until your rows are all sewn together. Yay – how cool is your quilt looking now?!  Come back mid August to see the final reveal – who thinks I will put a border on my quilt? Comment below and let me know if I should add one since I just cant decide!

Happy Sewing,

Katie Skoog

 

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

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