New Growth {part 1} - a free Poplun Designs Quilt Tutorial!

I really love giving handmade gifts – Christmas, wedding or baby showers, house warming parties – you name it.  Unfortunately, I often grossly overestimate the amount of time that I need to finish and end up scrambling to finish at the last minute, pulling all-nighters that rival the days of procrastinating on my college papers!

The other day, I was playing around with quilt designs in Electric Quilt 6, trying to come up with a design that could be whipped up over a weekend or during a couple of baby’s afternoon naps.  This was my favorite pattern - I’m calling it “New Growth” because it reminds me of tiny spring buds poking their heads up through the snow as winter starts fading to spring.

Fabric in the EQ6 mock-up is Twirl by Me and My Sister for Moda

As I was looking back over my posts from 2012, I realize that I never celebrated my 100th post back in January, so I've decided to celebrate now with a free quilt tutorial and quilt along.

Lately, I've only been able to find time to quilt during my son's afternoon naps, so rather than posting this tutorial all at once, I've broken it up into several "nap time segments" that I'll be posting every few days between now and Easter.  So, in two weeks, we'll have a finished quilt.

This project is strip-pieced, so the assembly goes super fast!  I think that if I didn't have any quilting time constraints, I could easily finish this quilt in a weekend, or even in under 24 hours if I was feeling super ambitious.

So here's all the stats for the quilt!!

Finished Size: 48" x 48"

Materials Needed:

• 7 fat quarters in various colors
• 1 3/4 yards of your favorite coordinating background print
• 1/3 yard for binding
• 52" x 52" piece of batting
• 2 1/2 yards {or 52" x 52"square} fabric for backing

Supplies Needed:

• Rotary cutter, ruler, and cutting mat
• Water-soluble fabric marker or painter's tape (for marking the quilting lines on the finished top)
• Iron, ironing board, and starch if desired

Recommended Supplies (makes all the cutting go WAY faster!):

• June Taylor Shape Cut ruler available at her online store or at JoAnns, or even WalMart!

To get started:

Wash, press and starch your fabrics.  Cutting instructions are right around the corner!

So, please join me!  There's absolutely no pressure to finish by Easter - start any time and finish at your own pace!  I've set up a Flickr group so that we can all share pictures and progress.  If you'd like to be on the list of participants, please just leave me a little comment below with your blog information or email me at: Poplun{at}gmail{dot}com.  Be sure to grab the Quilt-A-Long button for your blog too!

<center><a href="http://poplun.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-growth-part-1-free-poplun-designs.html" target="_blank"><img alt="New Growth Quilt-A-Long by Poplun Designs" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD50MCYxonw1OgZgfvBGGpW-Q1qCFaDdRdrvn5E7uZiUxzFkjWn8Q77ubwgnGxYslMgd76yXWJJheQFgSj16elBKlfJ2I3yApcoUzMuWeSq6vXWHGN4X8J3MrEVNeHRtSJTCmFGIOOAz_R/s125/Twirl.JPG"/></a></center>

Can't wait to see the quilts as they come together!

Happy Sewing!