Fast and Fat Quarter Friendly Folk Art Baby Quilt

Here’s a quick baby quilt top to do. It’s not really Courthouse Steps or any named Log Cabin variation, but it’s based on that idea.

Layer your fat quarters as thick as you are comfortable with, I can usually manage to cut eight thick with my rotary cutter unless it’s been used on paper (I really ought to stop doing that). What width do you cut your strips? It doesn’t matter, as long as they’re all the same width. You’ll need plain (solid) strips that width too.

And then you need squares. The squares and the border are the same fabric so pick something thematic – I went with a gold leaf print here. (Autumn colours, etc.) It doesn’t matter what size the squares are either. I chose to make mine larger/wider than my strips but you could make them the same size or even make them smaller. Folk art is like that, folks.

On opposite sides of the square sew two pieces of the plain strips. Then, drawing randomly from your pile of fat quarter strips, you will sew strips along the other two sides. Back to the plain strips on the alternate sides, then random fat quarter strips again… keep going until you like the size of your block.

Now do that again, but start with the fat quarter strips on two opposite sides and then the plain strips on the other two sides, then fat quarter, then plain… until you have another block the same size as the first.

You’ll alternate these blocks when putting the quilt top together. And then you’ll put your border on it. If you’re like me, then you’ll stick it in the closet and feel guilty you’re not getting around to quilting it yet and wonder if maybe it would look good machine quilted, or tied even.