Split Square Kitty quilt

Split Square/ Kitty quilt

Split square Kitty quilt

One of our little Grand daughter just turned 3 this month (February) so it's time to make her a "Big Girl" quilt. She loves kittens, puppies and the colour pink so the quilt I'm making for her has two of these on it.  I decided to make 8 inch split square blocks. I had made a similar split square block as a border around a panel about 2 years ago for my husband's grand niece's baby. I loved how the blocks looked on that quilt and have wanted to make a whole quilt like that ever since.

It is made from 2 strip sets, one light, one dark with 4 different fabrics:
-a dark mottled pink,
-kitties on white background,
-tiny white flowers on pink, and
 -green polka dot fabric for contrast.

The kitty fabric and the dark pink are my main fabrics.
Cut the fabrics into 2 1/2 inch strips, then sew 1 main fabric strip to 1 supporting fabric strip lengthwise. (Kitty fabric sewn to the green spotted fabric;   the dark pink fabric to the small flowers. )

 Next cut the strip sets  2 1/2 inches wide crossways.  Cut rectangles 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches from both main fabrics.  (Kitty and dark pink in this case.)  Sew a little strip set rectangle to the same colour fabric rectangle. Now you have a 4/12 inch block. Sew 4 of these blocks together (with the small squares in the centre) to make the larger 8 1/2 inch blocks.

4 small split square blocks = one 8 1/2 inch block

I made 30 blocks like this and then sewed them together, 6 rows of 5 blocks.

6 rows of 5 blocks

These 30 inner blocks measured 40 1/2" X 49" inches when sewn together.

2 inch wide inner border

 Then I added the narrow border of white fabric (cut 2 1/4 inches to make a 1 3/4" width inner border.

Now the quilt top measured 44" X 52" inches. I was aiming for a 50" X 60" quilt so I added a 4 1/4 inch outer border. (Cut kitty fabric strips 4 1/2" wide for outer border.)  I had to cut 5 strips in order to have extra to add to each of the sides. 

Now for the back:  I had the perfect size of pink fleece fabric in my stash for the back with lots of overhang.

Outer 4 inch kitty border

I cut a piece of batting to fit the quilt top with 3 or 4 inches extra on all sides. Then I taped the pink fleece to the kitchen floor with strips of masking tape, and smoothed the batting out over it. 

Next I smoothed out the quilt top on top of the other 2 layers.  I pinned tall the layers together starting in the middle and working my way outward (a total of 186 pins.)

Quilting

That was many hours of work just to get to that stage! (About 40 hours work, I would guess.)  

 Now it was time to quilt it. Because fleece can be slippery to work with, before free motion quilting, I first ditch quilted down the centre of the quilt, both vertically and horizontally to hold the fleece tight to the quilt top.  I ditch quilted around each individual block as well, and then sewed all around both sides of the inner border.

Free motion quilting: flowers and ocean waves patterns

Free motion quilting

Sometimes it's hard to know how to quilt a quilt once it's pinned together.  I loved the flower pattern that I had quilted on the pinwheel blocks of my Kaleidoscope quilt so I decided to use that idea again. 

I started with sewing a circle at the very centre of each 8 inch block, then I sewed 4 petals around it, one in each small centre square and next I sewed a larger petal around each small petal. It looks somewhat like a rose. After that I continued by sewing a wiggly, swirly line to the middle of the next 8 inch block and made another rose there, and so on. I need up with 30 roses. 

Now for the inner border. A simple free motion wave pattern in white thread should do the trick. 

Last: the outer border. Maybe my signature free motion butterflies?  Hmmm, maybe I should continue the flower theme and make a daisy chain- a continuous row of daisies all around the outside!  

After that, sew a 3/8 inch seam all around the outer edge of the quilt, Next, trim the excess fleece and batting off the sides.  Almost done…

Finished quilting and binding Mar 2/16

Now cut 2 1/4 inch fabric strips and sew together to make the binding (perimeter of quilt plus 1 inch for each corner and 6 inches overlap at beginning and end… (a total of 50 + 60 + 50 + 60 + 4 + 6 =  230 inches.) Press binding lengthwise, wrong sides together.

Pinned binding strips

Last, sew the binding around the edges on the front sides of the quilt, flip the edging over to the back, and hand stitch all around. NOW you are finally done!  Yay! Time to enjoy the fruits of your many hours of labour. : D

May your needles never be dull and your bobbin never run out.  Happy Quilting!

I love the back quilting pattern- flowers and oceans waves