Zig Zag Quilt: Quilting and Binding

Make your quilt sandwich (with the Zoo fabric on the back)

You'll be stitching in the ditch along the edges of the orange and blue zig zags and also in a zig zag pattern across the white strip section.

Mark the zig zag across the white strip with a hera marker or colored chalk and a ruler, mimicking the larger zig zags.

 

After it's quilted  trim and square off the whole sandwich and bind with the Tangerine Kona Cotton. (If you need a refresher course on double fold binding check out my Wool Blanket tutorial.)

 

Comments

[Hoopey]

This quilt is beautiful!!

I love the quilt journal entries of this blog. They're the best.

[mari]

what at great simple blanket that can be sized for your needs. The triangle method works really well, less fuss and much more accurate than trying to sew them the other way

[juliann]

This is the most beautiful little quilt! I love the colors and the fabrics you chose. I also love the zig zag pattern, it looks like it would be fun to put together. . . thanks for sharing! I've got to try it!

[Michele]

Just adorable! I had to make it right away! And of course I copied your colors. Wish I had the exact fabrics! LOL! It's not quilted yet, but it looks so cute. Thank you for the pattern.

[Erin K]

I love this. I wanted to make one for the next baby I need one for but I decided to make one for my OWN baby instead. So I'm making it for a twin size bed. A little different too. If you want to see what I'm working on I'm blogging every step. I'm a little spastic with projects like this, there is no telling what I'll end up with! haha.

Thanks so much for posting this and the directions. I am in LOVE with this zig zag pattern.

[Veronica]

I was wondering about your instructions to stitch in the ditch for the quilting because really there is no true ditch since the seams are pressed open. Traditionally, when you stitch in the ditch, the seams are pressed to one side, making a ditch. Won't stitching in the ditch with the seams pressed open weaken the seams of all the pieced blocks?

[purl bee]

Hi Veronica,
You can do your quilting "next to the ditch" in this case, or you can press your seams to the side if you're worried about weak seams. So far Molly's quilt seems to be holding up!

[Niki]

I am in the midst this project and was 'worried' about the blocks of matching fabric touching each other, but now that I'm revisiting the colour pictures online I see that your's does that too -- and it looks great. I may have to make several quilts in various colour ways as I'm loving the zigs zags so much.

[Danielle]

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this. It looks so simple but seems like it will go together so easily. I can't wait to make this!

[emily]

I've never made a quilt in my life, but this is so inspiring and gorgeous... I might just have to try it.

[Liza]

I adore this quilt! I'm fairly new to quilting...I'm just finishing my third project. I failed miserably when I tried to do a zig-zag with a pattern that didn't use half-square triangles, so I'd really like to attempt to elusive project again. This pattern looks so much easier!

My only question, though, is how much fabric would I need to do a full (as in double-bed) sized version? I'm really awful with math and conversions (which is why my degree is in English!). I'd like to have a variety of colors for the zig zags, but just don't know where to start.

I made the Purl Bee's Wedding Quilt as a Christmas gift for my friend and had so much fun putting it together. I loved how the pattern included the exact amounts needed for each fabric. It was my very first quilt and the easy instructions were really appreciated!

Thanks for any help you may offer!

[Amber]

I'm with emily. I LOVE this quilt, but am a very new quilter (just finished my first project). How would I figure out the fabric amounts needed for a larger quilt? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

[stacey]

i, too, love this quilt and am making a version for my son!

my question has to do with the binding: how wide is this binding and how wide should i cut the strips to piece together?

thanks!

[Jess]

The simplest way to size this up (if you don't change the size of the triangles) is to look at the size of each triangle square. Eight of them make the quilt about 32" when finished and seam allowances are sewn in, so they work up to 4" square. If a queen-sized quilt is roughly 88" across, you'll need 22 of them across. That's a little less than 3x the fabric that Molly recommended. From there, if you increase the length at the same rate, you'll probably end up near the right length for a queen-sized quilt.

Personally, I'd just make everything bigger (that's a LOT of little triangles otherwise). For instance, if you doubled the size of the squares, you'd only need 11 to go across. Then double the size of the white bands, and it would work out well. You still need about triple the fabric, but the quilt won't be so darn busy.

Molly says you need 1/2 yard of colored fabric, and 1.5 yards of white, so I'd buy 1.5 yards of colored fabric, and 4.5 yards of white. That's probably not a bad calculation for a queen-sized quilt, and left over fabric doesn't spoil, so you can always make use of it later.

Correct me if I'm wrong, folks, but that's how I'd do it. Take the size of the quilt you want to make (google quilt sizes, and you'll find more info). Look at the size of the finished block. Divide the second number into the first. Look at how much fabric was recommended for the first quilt, look at how many more blocks you'll need to make the larger quilt, and increase fabric accordingly. Not super-accurate, and you'll almost certainly have too much at the end, but this is the "easy" way. I hope that helps folks figure it out.

[Liza]

Thanks, Jess!

[Nance]

Beautiful quilt...but did I miss the directions for the binding? I see that a tutorial is referenced, but there doesn't seem to be specific directions for this project in terms of number of strips to cut and strip width from the fabric meant for the binding.

[purl bee]

Hi Nance-

Thanks for the nice comment. There are no specific directions for the binding of this quilt but here is a run down of the process that will work for any quilt:

Traditionally a quilt is bound with double fold binding that is folded from strips that are cut 2 1/4-inches wide which have been pieced together beforehand to be at least 6-inches longer than the entire perimeter of the quilt.

Below is another quilt journal we recently ran with a binding tutorial at the bottom of the page. Hopefully it will help to clarify things:

http://www.purlbee.com/courthouse-steps-mini-quilts/

Thank you- Molly

[Lea]

This quilt is so beautiful, and nicely done. It inspires me to try something similar.

[Sauermama]

Your quilt is lovely and so fresh looking. I'm using it as inspiration for my crazy hot mess of a 1st quilt. Of course I had to find a way to drive myself absolutely insane :) Wish me luck: http://sauersometimes.com/2011/07/quilthell_pt1/

[Rachel]

Thank you for the wonderful directions. I was able to make one easily :)

http://afewthousandmiles.blogspot.com/2012/01/made-it.html