Lilac Time Tutorial for beginners.....

I was asked by two people to do a tutorial on this quilt. It isn't a hard quilt, but if you are a total beginner, it may seem a little confusing. I've tired to give very basic information for the true beginner. This quilt requires 4 different fabrics. Two that are sort of dark and two that are sort of light if you want nice contrast. I have numbered the 4 fabrics that I used and will refer to them by the number in the rest of these instructions.

I often make a diagram on graph paper to get the idea of how the colors will look and what order they will be in.

From each of the 4 fabrics you will be cutting 2 1/2" strips and 4 1/2" strips. It takes many strips of each depending on how big you want the quilt.
Using the numbers, you will then combine the following pairs of strips:
(2 1/2") #1 to the (4 1/2") #4
(2 1/2") #2 to the (4 1/2") #3
(2 1/2") #3 to the (4 1/2") #1
(2 1/2) #4 to the (4 1/2") #2
It looks complicated in writing, but when you have the strips cut and lay them out and look at your diagram, you will understand :-)

Lay one of the 2 1/2" strips right side down on the correct 4 1/2" strip and sew together with a quarter inch seam.
(BEGINNER NOTE:) All quilting is usually done with a quarter inch seam and you must get used to doing it accurately. My machine has a quarter inch foot with a metal piece that sticks down so as I lay the fabric next to it, it guides it along at a quarter inch. With some machines the foot itself is a quarter inch from the needle to the edge of the foot. Measure and find out. You can make your own guide by laying a ruler on the machine, lowering the needle to touch the quarter inch mark on the ruler, and then sticking a pad of sticky notes or some tape next to the edge of the ruler on the machine. Then use that tape/notes as your guide.

Your finished strips when pressed will look like this. (this is only two of the combinations)

(BEGINNER NOTE:) when pressing seams, I press from the top, gently pushing back the fabric against the sewn seam. A decision has to be made on which way to press the seam. If you are using light and dark fabrics you usually press towards the dark so the seam will not show through the lighter fabric. I pressed all of my strips for this quilt towards either #1 or #2. They always say to "press" and not "iron" in quilting. If you scrub away at the fabric with your iron in a normal ironing manner, you will stretch the fabric and inaccuracies will begin to creep in.

This is the back of the strip showing the seam pressed towards the darker fabric. I do not press my seams open in most cases.

Cutting the strips.

(BEGINNERS NOTE:) After laying the bottom edge of your strip along a line on your cutting board, slice off a small piece using the lines to give yourself a clean straight edge.

The strips with the 2 1/2" dark fabric are cut into 2 1/2" pieces all along the strip as shown above. (BEGINNER NOTE) For the most accurate cut lay one of the cross lines on your ruler on the seam line where the two pieces come together because the bottom edge may be a bit wavy.

For the strips with the 2 1/2" lighter fabric, cut the strips in 4 1/2" pieces in the same manner.

You will end up with the 4 sets show above and will combine them as shown at the bottom of this photo.

If you pressed all your seams to the dark, than when you look at the back of the pieces that are to go together you will see that one set of seams goes to the left and one to the right....excellent!

(This was a hard photo to hold and take at the same time!)

When you lay the two pieces right sides together to sew them, the seams will butt up to each other and nestle together. I'm stretching it a bit here to show how they come together. For a beginner you can stick a pin in to hold them. It is always important for these seams to come together perfectly for a nice looking finished block.

I sit down with the stacks of block and "chain piece" them. This is the process of sewing one and then feeding the next one under the needle without removing the first one so you end up with a "clothesline" of sewn blocks as shown below. It is a way to save thread and not have all the long ends of thread hanging off the blocks that have to be cut off and it is a fast way to do a whole lot of similar blocks in a short time. You will have to have quilted awhile to understand that!

Here is my clothesline of sewn blocks. Now you clip them apart and press them open.

You end up with two different finished blocks.

I lay them out on the floor or a bed in the right order and then start sewing rows together.
How many blocks and how many rows is up to you depending on the size quilt you want. I have not shown borders because I have not made any yet for my quilt top and am not sure what I will do for them. I ran out of black fabric and wanted it for the borders. I'm waiting for a piece of the black fabric that a quilting friend found for me on Etsy! A good reason to always buy plenty of fabric for a project!

I hope some of this made sense and was helpful. I'm not used to trying to tutor in a blog.
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I have to mention another method of making these blocks even though I didn't use the method. Eleanor Burns developed this method. From each of the 4 fabrics you would cut 4 1/2" squares and sew them into 9-patch blocks in the order shown on this diagram. ( I do not have enough fabric to use to demonstrate this method) Then lay your ruler on the middle of each 9-patch block and slice it both directions (dotted lines). This gives you 4 of each block from a 9-patch. Keep in mind that you would need two different 9-patch combinations as shown by the numbers in the diagram to get the 2 types of blocks needed.