Serger Decorative Stitches Session 4: Reversible Baby Quilt

Now comes the rewarding part. I'm gonna show you how to take what we've just learned with decorative edges and make a reversible baby quilt. This quilt is fast and easy. It employs quilt-as-you-go technique and we will be using a decorative edge instead of traditional binding to finish it. What you're going to need for a 36-by-36-inch baby quilt will be 6 1/2-inch squares of quilt cotton, and you will need 36 of those, and then you will need 36 6 1/2-inch squares of fleece.

We're not using a batting in here, it will be too bulky with this method. Instead, the fleece is going to serve as both the batting and the backing. If you would like to make a throw instead of a baby quilt, I would recommend a 48-by-48-inch size, which means you will cut 64 6 1/2-inch squares, or you can make it a little bit longer and go 48 by 54, and, in that case, you would cut 72 6 1/2-inch squares. The size of the square stays the same, only the number of squares changes. You don't want to go any bigger than a six-inch finished square.

Smaller would actually be better, but, and the reason is because we don't want a lot of slippage in there between the top layer and the backing layer. You can come back at the end and do some cross stitching for quilting with your sewing machine, but it really isn't necessary. The reason I didn't go with smaller squares, and you'll see it as the project progresses is that because of the thickness of the seams, you don't want those too close either or you'll lose the draping and softness of the quilt. For this particular one, I'm using a three-thread overlock stitch. Typically I would use four thread, but I decided to go with three to eliminate bulk.

I'm using wooly nylon in both of my loopers and I'm using regular sewing thread in my left needle for a three-thread wide overlock stitch. Now what I recommend, I like to set up as I'm going to sew so I don't make mistakes, and the pattern that I have here, you'll get to see it at the end, this is kind of a mystery quilt, if you will, but I want to maintain my pattern so I went ahead and numbered my rows and made an arrow to myself so I would know which way is facing toward the top. I want set up for row one and two at the same time so we're gonna just put these here so we don't get confused. And you're going to take one piece of fleece and lay it underneath your cotton square. The trick with this, and this is where it's easy to get confused, we're going to then, as you have these lined up.

you're going to sandwich the fleece in the center, all right? So your right sides are on the outside and you will be stitching on the right side of this fabric, and the fleece will be to the inside. You also want to make sure that you keep your rows aligned so that, in this case, when I stitch, my first row is on the top, the second row is on the bottom. So we will get started here and you're gonna be amazed at how fast this goes up. I think you're going to find that it actually will take you longer to cut out all of your squares than it will to actually construct this quilt.

The biggest thing you need to do is make sure that everything stays aligned. Now, this is not an heirloom quilt. This is a fast, in and out, down-and-dirty quilt that is not going to be absolutely perfect, but it will be fun, so just sit back and enjoy it. And if you notice that your fabric is getting off, you can always adjust your differential feed. As you come to the end, slow down and get your next set ready.

You can actually go ahead and pre do all of your fleece and fabric if you want, but sometimes I find it's better to do it this way just because everything stays aligned. If you try and do layers and layers of this, it does get off. And then the ticket here is to lift that presser foot and slip it in as close as you can to the square head without overlapping and then just sew directly on. This is called chain stitching. It's a technique, as far as a piecing, that you find in typical quilting.

Now, my fabric is getting off just a little bit. And, again, if it gets off a little bit, it's not the end of the world. It is a very forgiving quilt. Now I'm just gonna take you through a little bit here. Line it up, put it down, hold your edges, stitch away.

Now you've probably been, if you've been paying attention, have noticed that as I put my pieces out, that the bottom piece is the same as the top piece on the previous square. So that's a little tip to help you make sure that you haven't reversed your squares at all, that your design will stay the same. So, in this case, I had the, lavender was my last square on the top, and now the lavender will be my square, next square, on the bottom. I like to do anything I can to help keep me on track and I like things that are fast and easy, primarily because, as a professional quilter, I don't get a lotta time to do my own projects so, when I do, I like to be able to get in and out. All right, so now I have rows one and two sewed together.

Now we're going to do row three. Here's where it starts getting a little tricky, but not that much. You just have to kinda remember how your pattern was going, and if you remember, I told you that the one that's on top becomes the bottom, well, in this case, you'll see that that applies to this row also, especially when we do our next one. So here we are. We're going to do the same thing.

We're doing row three now. So, as you can see, my fabric's going and kind of a diagonal, and I told you that whatever was the top one is now going to be on the bottom. So if that was my top, this will be my bottom color. And, again, we're keeping the fleece sandwiched in the center, and we're sewing on the right side. Now, one of the reasons I chose wooly nylon for this particular quilt instead of pearl crown rayon, although pearl crown rayon would have looked gorgeous because you'd really be seeing the thread, is because the wooly nylon is very, very soft.

It's got a nice feel to it, and I thought that would feel better, especially if this was a baby quilt, against their little baby hands and arms and legs as they're laying on the quilt, so there's all different kinds of considerations for when you're picking thread. And after a while, you just kinda get into a rhythm of putting this together. We're almost done with the third row. We're almost halfway done with our quilt. Now, like I say, the biggest thing is just, if you are doing a specific pattern, keeping your your pattern in mind.

Now, if you're doing a scrappy quilt or something more random, then you may not be as concerned but I wanted a specific pattern. So, so far we have our quilt is halfway done. I'm just gonna open this up so you can kinda see where we're going. And the bigger it gets, the more you have to work to keep these rows in line, so that now when I put on the fourth row I wanna make sure that everything is lining up. So I'm going to let you go take a quick break and I'm going to put on the other three rows, and then when we come back, I'll show you how you do the horizontal rows.

All right, we've got all of our vertical rows sewed. That didn't take very long, and I think you can kind of see how the pattern is working out, how it's in a diagonal design. Again, you don't have to do that, but that's what I chose to do for mine, and we'll just see how it all turns out. So now it's time to do the horizontal rows. And what you're going to do is basically flip horizontal rows one and two together, keeping, again, the fleece to the inside.

You don't have to pin, but I like to just to get my seams to line up as much as possible. It's going to be close. There's going to be a few places where your seams may, excuse me, be off. It is not really worth worrying about it. This is the type of quilt that I'm looking at for primarily a little child or just a nice casual little quilt, perhaps for somebody in a nursing home or watching football on the couch or whatever, it's a pure utility quilt.

And the thing that I find, why I love sewing for children is that they honestly do not pay any attention to if your seams match or not. They just don't care. They just see the gift and figure that you love them and made something for them. So I'm hoping that this will be close. Now what I'm doing here, in case you haven't noticed, I am nesting these seams, and what that means is I'm having one seam go in one direction and one go in the other.

And, as we go down the quilt, I wanna make sure that we're keeping that order going. Now, because of the direction that I will be sewing this, I want row number two going to my right, which means when I put it under the machine, the bottom seams will be facing downward, and so it will be able to sew nice and easily and look good. Now, with a serger, you absolutely never ever, ever, ever want to sew over pins. If you do, you will break your loopers and that is a very expensive fix. You don't want to have that happen.

So whatever you do, make sure you're removing these pins before you get to them. Now, I told you to try and get your patches as close together as possible when you were sewing, it just makes it easier when you turn. But occasionally you will get some that had a little bit of a gap there, maybe you were in hurry and didn't take time to get it up exactly. The wooly nylon thread does tend to stretch a little bit, as you can see. Don't worry about it.

This is very, very forgiving. And, what happens when we come through with our cross seam, these, I have my knife unlocked, so those little bits of thread will actually be cut off by the knife and you won't even know that that happened. And again, as much as possible, you're gonna be lining up your seams or your edges, just like you do for a regular quilt. So now I'm ready to go. I still keep all the same settings on my machine.

It will be a little bit bulkier. You may need to slow down just slightly, but not a whole lot. So let's go ahead and sew this row and see what we get. You also don't wanna run over pins with a knife, that is another costly fix. A knife isn't as much to replace, but you certainly don't want to do damage to your machine whenever possible, so it's just not worth it.

Take the pins out, and you shouldn't be sewing over them with your sewing machine because it can throw the timing off and cause a lot of problems for you. So I do not recommend it. It's a hard habit to break, but it's worth it. Right, so our first horizontal row is now seamed. Let's take a quick look at it.

And this, believe me, will look much better once it's pressed and the seams are going in the correct directions, but this gives you a bit of a feel for what it's going to look like. And, again, when you give this a bit of steam, it's going to all go in very nicely and look beautiful. Now, what you need to be careful of, and let's go ahead and pin this next row so I can show you, we want to make sure that, since the second row, in this case, is pointing to my left, that we want to make sure that as we come to the third seam, that we are indeed keeping that seam, top to bottom, going in the same direction, and that's why I highly recommend pinning it. So, in this case, we are going to have the second row pointing to the left. Oh, and I wanted to show you the back here.

So, in this case, we've done a pretty good job of matching up those seams. I guess I got lucky, but it looks pretty good, and that's what it looks like on the back and it has a nice quilted feel to it and I think you're gonna be quite pleased when this little quilt is all finished. So I'm just going to go ahead and continue pinning this, and I will stitch up the rest of this and when we come back, I'll show you how to finish it off. Well, here it is. We've got it all pieced together and it came out rather cute, if I do say so, and it's not perfect, but it is definitely a nice, usable quilt.

Now to finish it, I'm going to do a decorative edge instead of the traditional binding, but one tip I wanna give you is how to round the corners and I usually just get a bowl that has a curve that's pretty much the size that I want. I put it down on the rotary mat, this one fits in very nicely with a six-inch square there, and I just come right around and trim that corner. Just like that. Move to the next one. We'll just trim these up real quick, because it is much, much easier to go around a curve than it is to go around square edges, and given how bulky this is, I don't wanna add more bulk in those corners by having to stitch over in two directions so just give it a nice gentle curve and you're all set to go.

And, if you want, you can even just pin that so that it stays while you're getting ready to go around there. Now, as far as finishing this, you have two different edges that I would highly recommend that you've learned to do in this video. One would be the blanket stitch. Remember, you will need the water-soluble stabilizer to do that, or you can continue on and do the decorative overlock, which would be the same as we've done here. You can use a different thread for the outside if you want.

You might wanna consider pearl crown rayon to give it some extra pop, but that's all it takes. And I wanted to show you the back. For the most part, there were a couple places where I got off, but for the most part, it came out nice and matched, matched up very well, and, as you can see, you really don't need to do any extra quilting to it. This will hold and launder just fine and take a lot of love and abuse. If, for some reason you, really want to stitch it down, I would just go diagonal to diagonal with your sewing machine, and you can actually come straight across here to anchor your seams down if you want.

As a minimum, I would give your seams a really good press so they know which direction to go in, and there you have it. That quickly, we've made a nice, reversible little baby quilt. So I hope you have a lotta fun with this project and, more importantly, I hope that this video inspires you to get out there and take that serger out of the box and just go play and have fun and let your creative side come through.