Queen Batiks - Part 1

Since my first project was a gift for someone else, I wanted my second project to be just for me, Matt and Lucy. As I stated before, I am a fan of Hancocks of Paducah. What's great about the website is that they have sale sections for every dollar increment of fabric from $2.98 to 5.98 and a pre-cut sale section. I love buying things on sale so these sections are perfect for me. While browsing through one day I came across a listing for a batik quilt kit that I just had to have! Hancocks no longer sells this kit but I did find it on another website called Creative Quilt Kits. The kit I bought had 90 10"squares (for around $60! I love sales!) in beautiful Tonga batiks and super easy to follow instructions. There were 30 different fabrics and 3 pieces of each. Here's what it looked like online as a lap quilt:

The following is a picture of all of the different color 10" squares laid out on my bed. There are 3 of each square:

The cuts were made following these steps:

Stack 3 coordinating (but different) fabrics on top of each other with all of the edges squared up.
Cut 1 & 2 same size ( 1 1/2in - 4 1/2in)
Cut 3 & 4 same size (1 1/2in - 4 1/2in)
You’ll be left with a square piece of fabric

Mix and match pieces so that each color makes an "L" or a square in all 3 of the blocks. Sew edges on starting with the square and cut 4, then 3, 2, and then 1 last

Here's what it looked like on my cutting board:

The first square in these photos is what your block will look like when all the pieces are sewn together and the other 2 are what they look like before they are sewn together. And yes, I am sewing on my kitchen table. I didn't have my own sewing space in our apartment yet. I just realized that I never did take pictures of the sewing space I did make....oh well! We're in our new house now! Pictures to come.


Once the pieces are sewn together, trim the edges so you have squares all of the same size. I think these end up being 8 1/2in squares. There were 5 different versions of cuts for this pattern but you could also do all of the cuts the same if you wanted a more uniform look. I didn't love some of the combinations towards the end but I knew that once all of the blocks were pieced together that they would look better.

I laid out all of my finished blocks on my bed and played around with them until I was happy with the mix of color and pattern:

Here's a (not to scale) drawing of how the quilt came together:

I had enough blocks to make a quilt almost as big as a queen bed so to get the last few inches I added a few borders. I found the coordinating batik in a quilt shop with Ann and I think it really ties all of the fabrics together and pops even though it's not from the same line. I got enough to do a border and to use for the back of the quilt:

I chose to do all of my blocks with the Ls going in the same direction but I think it would look cool with 4 blocks turned in to each other like this as well:

Unfortunately this quilt is still not finished. My apartment wasn't big enough for me to stretch the quilt out and baste and my machine isn't big enough to quilt the darn thing. One of Ann's friends is going to quilt it for me one of these days when I have some spare funds. I am currently paying for wedding and new home expenses so this project is going to have to wait. I would love to see pictures of your version of this quilt!