A Quilt for Craft Cheaters

When it comes to crafts and DIY projects I require basically instant satisfaction. If it's going to take much more than a day or two, I may lose interest. So I never really thought I'd be much of a quilter. But, I saw a cheat on Pinterest that I just had to try. I combined this with my favorite self-binding blanket pattern and it made for a time-friendly quilt project. If you've never quilted, this is the place to start!

First you pick out your fabrics, and cut nine squares total, whatever size you want. I think I did 9" squares.  Lay them out the way you want and then sew (right sides together) into strips of three with 1/2" inseam. Then sew the strips together (again right sides together) to form a 3x3 square. Iron all the seams.

Okay now here's the cool part: measure and mark the half way line vertically and horizontally. Then cut along both lines to divide it into four even pieces. It should look like this:

Now, you take your four squares and re-arrange them. Flip them around until you like how it looks. Then sew them (right sides) together. Then you have one big square again, but it looks like you pieced together lots of different sizes. One thing you have to be careful of is using a fabric with a pattern that only looks good "right side up." Luckily I anticipated this, so you see above I sewed one of the printed squares in sideways to begin with, that way when I turned it, all four of those jungle pieces could be right side up. See below:

To bring it all together I used the self binding blanket method which I learned from Tea Rose Home (visit her post for all the details). Briefly: my top layer ended up at 25.5 inches (3 x 9" squares = 27,  minus 3 x .5"seams = 25.5), so I cut the back piece 35" square. This allows for about a 2.5 inch boarder around the outside. You could make it wider or narrower once you've tried the method once or twice. I also added a layer of batting to this one after it was all sewed together and turned right side out. I just slipped it in through the space I used to turn it, and smoothed it out all the way to the corners.  Finally I top stitched all the way around the blanket on the boarder, a quarter inch from the edge of the patched panel. 

I hope that doesn't sound too complicated, it really comes together so fast, especially for a quilt.

Happy crafting and thanks for reading!