Saltwater Taffy Quilt Tutorial - Scrappy Happy Summer Sew Along!!! ...

Hello:)

I'm back!

Apparently I went on a 

little bloggy break from our 

Scrappy Happy Summer Sew Along

 last week:)…I've been waiting until 

this quilt was quilted 

so that I could show it to you!

Meet my newest scrappy summer creation…

"Salt Water Taffy"

54" x 54"

I named it after saltwater taffy because

it's summer and salt water taffy is famous

 around here for being the favorite parade 

candy that's thrown out to the crowd:)

YaY for parades!

I also think all of the colors and the shape

 of the block looks like salt water taffy…

don't you?

This is one of the projects that I made with my leftover

fabric that was trimmed off the Easy Corner Triangles

on my 24" Summer Skies block:)

If you remember I showed you a super simple way

 to make half square triangles from the trimmings.

I ended up with 72 of them with 2 colors

like the ones pictured above on the left.

I set those aside for later…

 I'll show you the other project that

 I made with them next week:)

For this quilt I used the 144 half square triangles 

that are one half background and one half color.

I decided to take advantage of the fact that

there were sets of 4 or 8 in the exact same fabrics

and come up with a block using 4 matching 

half square triangles.

I sewed all 144 together like this…

and pressed the seams open

so that I could place each block any which way 

as I was playing with them and not have to 

worry about which way I had already pressed:)

I ended up with 36 blocks that measure 

6 1/2" UNFINISHED

I played with this setting first.

I call this block my

 "Salt Water Star"

and I love it!!!

 But since I had just finished my

 Summer Skies quilt with big star blocks…

I saved this for later...

And simply sewed the blocks together

all going the same direction…

and my Saltwater Taffy quilt was born!

I sewed 6 rows of six blocks…or in other words…

a 6x6 setting:)

I laid it out on some fabric on the edge 

 to see if I wanted

 to finish it off with just a binding…

I liked the way it looked

but doing it this way my quilt would only finish at 

36" square and I wanted it a little bigger.

So I added an orange inner border

 and a green outer border!

Cutting for borders…

From background; (1/2 yard total needed)

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 36 1/2"

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 38 1/2"

Sew these on first then add the orange border; (1/4 yard)

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 38 1/2" 

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 40 1/2"

Now add more borders of the background;

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 40 1/2"

Cut 2 - 1 1/2" x 42 1/2"

Now for the green; (1 3/4 yards lengthwise )

Cut 2 - 6 1/2" x 42 1/2"

Cut 2 - 6 1/2" x 54 1/2"

You will have enough border fabric 

to cut binding strips

but I wanted to use mine for

 another project so I used the same fabric for binding

that I used for the backing:)

Either way…

you will need 226" of prepared binding

which you can get from 1/2 yard of fabric:)

I love how my Salt Water quilt turned out…

it's a great size for the back of a chair…

a lap quilt...

a baby quilt…

a wallhanging…

or a table topper:)

Have fun with your

 half square triangles…

I can't wait to see them on the 

Scrappy Happy Summer

Flickr group!!!

Remember that all info

as well as a link to 

each and every post

from this sew along 

can be found on the home page

of the flickr group!

See you there:)

xx

Lori