Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Herringbone Baby Quilt


After my great-niece received the quilt for my great-great nephew River, she asked if I would make a quilt for her to give to a friend that was having a baby girl this month. Of course I would! After a few back and forth emails about patterns, she chose the herringbone pattern. Her friend's nursery decor is blush, cream, aqua, grey, and touches of gold with flamingos, pineapples, giraffes, and other animals, but I found it difficult to find coordinating fabrics and colors with those elements, so I decided to just stick with the colors she wanted.

I looked at several patterns for herringbone quilts and finally decided to use a
YouTube video tutorial by Jenny of Missouri Star Quilt Company to make HSTs (half square triangles) that are sewn together for the "chevron" shapes. Her method is to place two squares wrong sides together and sew a 1/4-inch seam completely around them, then cut them into quarters. This is the simplest and fastest method I've used, and I really enjoyed it! I included a few of my photos below. Click on the photos for larger detail.

Take two squares fabric, place right sides together (mine were 5-inch squares)

Sew 1/4 inch seam all the way around. Jenny sews "right off the edge"
instead of pivoting, so I did that also.

Take the sewn squares, place ruler on diagonal, and cut. Without shifting,
turn squares and cut on diagonal again. (A rotating cutting mat helps!)

The yield is four HSTs. Press seams toward darker fabric;
cut off "tips" (mine are still in place in the photo!)

Rotate HSTs to form herringbone pattern.

I made about 24 each of six different prints and one solid for the HSTs (I had several leftovers). I arranged them all on my design board so that one vertical row was "up" and the other vertical row was "down". Then I numbered each row and sewed them by horizontal row. Jenny sewed hers by vertical row, so the choice is whatever makes the most sense to you!


I tried shopping online for the combination of colors but finally ended up at my LQS to ask for help. I was directed to the Serenity fabric line by Amy Ellis for Moda and ended up buying yardage as well as the layer cake (which was 50% off!) I had not seen this line before, and I really love it.


Backing - Desert Bloom - Mesa Ivory by Sherri McConnell

Diagonal quilting to showcase the fabric and herringbone pattern


Quilt size: 39w X 43h
Fabrics: Serenity, Marbles Mist, Meow or Never, Bella Ivory - all by Moda
Backing: Desert Bloom Mesa by Moda
Binding: Aqua with white polka dots by Hobby Lobby
Thread: Superior So Fine #50 Genoa Gray

TUTORIAL OUTTAKES - Kitty helper Rosie stealing an HST

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful quilt Linda and thank you for the tutorial. It is much more straight forward than it looks from the finished quilt! Love the fabrics too! Christine x

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  2. Love this! And how neat that you found a line with all those colors! That's an interesting way to do the HSTs. I just got a rotating cutting mat last week. So I just might need to try these out. (I like everything about the cutting mat except the weird smell and the chemical warning on it for the state of California.)

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    1. I know what you mean about weird smells on our mats! Thanks for the nice comments.

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  3. I am a big fan of the herringbone pattern so really like this, but particularly the fabric that you've chosen that, of course, along with your great skills, make this such a lovely quilt.

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  4. Linda, that is so pretty, and the perfect colors for that baby's room! The backing is also perfect! I love herringbone quilts - thanks for showing us how you put it together.

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  5. Such a pretty quilt! And the colour combo is lovely!

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