Thursday, August 14, 2008

Cathedral Window Quilt Tutorial

I started a quilt and I have had soooo many people ask me how to make it that I thought I would do a tutorial on it. It's a great quilt to use scraps on so here goes.......


I'm just doing a wall hanging so I bought 6 yards of muslin. It only comes in cream, white or black and I wanted color so I dyed it. I used Dylon fabric dye in olive green.


It's really easy to use and 2 packets did all the material

After it was dyed, washed and dried and ironed, I cut the material in 9 1/4 inch squares. You can do any size you want from 6-10. Just make sure you give yourself the 1/4 inch on the edges
fold all 4 sides in 1/4 of an inch and iron down
fold over and match ends and iron
fold the opposite way and iron, this will give you the mid point of your square


now this is like origami, you start folding in the corners to the midpoint that you found when you ironed the material
make sure you iron it down really good and then once again you fold all 4 corners into the middleyour square should look like this when done
tack all four points down in the middle, my camera sucks so I couldn't get a close enough pic of that

the to join the squares..I do 2 at a time, you do a running stitch on the BACK of the squares
then take a piece of scrap and fit it in the middle. I just use a bunch of scraps and trim as needed.
fold over the edge of the material catching the edge of the scrap and hand sew down.
do this for all 4 edges and it should look like this, I hope you can see it keep doing 2 squares then sew them together to make a 4 square patch and put scraps anywhere there is a diamond. If I have explained all this good enough, then you should end up with something like this.
you just keep adding squares til it is the size that you want. I love this quilt because there is no need for batting or backing. I throw a bunch of squares and scraps in a ziplock bag and take along to my sons football practice or anywhere else I know I'll be waiting awhile. If you have any questions just ask.
Enjoy :)

ps: A wonderful woman named Connie taught me how to make this. She makes the MOST amazing quilts I have ever seen!

6 comments:

amylouwhosews said...

That is so pretty! I'm impressed you dyed your own fabric. The blocks look really cool - I think I'd need to try it out while reading to really make sure I get it.

Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Wow Christina! That was a cool tutorial. I have always loved the Cathedral Window. It is one of my faves and you made it look so easy. I too would have to look at each step while trying to attempt it. Thank you for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Hey Christina,
The last three pics before your final pic of the wallhanging I am confused. I am gonna shoot ya an email to see if you can describe to me what I am missing.

Tipper said...

So pretty-makes me wish I could sew.

Sue said...

I always wondered how they did that. Thanks for the tutorial. ANOTHER thing to add to my list of things I'd like to try. Hey, do you hand-sew the running stitch? Is that what you bring? Perfect if it is so you can still talk and not have to think too much!

trisha too said...

i always wondered how that was done!

i am so NOT going to do it.

but now i could if i wanted to, thanks to you.