Block Holder

I’m a member of a quilt group that meets every second Wednesday night.  I don’t get to go every time – sometimes it’s just too hard to get everyone organised in time.  But I do make an effort to get there at least once a month.

We always have a Christmas dinner towards the end of the year, where we give away a gift to an unknown recipient.  This year we had to make a block roll that measured approximately 15” square.

I didn’t have a clue where to get the pattern from, as there seems to be very few online.  So I thought I might share how I made my version.

Right.  First of all, no real measurements here.  Just a rough guide.  I don’t have the energy to do a proper fancy schmancy tutorial tonight.  It’s been 40 degrees or more all week and I’m drained.  That’s 100 degrees for you non metric readers.  Very. Bloody. Hot.

Stitch, piece, applique or quilt a design on an approximately 13” square of fabric. I’ll be cutting mine back to 12.5” so make sure your design stitcks inside this measurement.

This is mine.  The original design was from a group on Flickr called ‘Hoop Love’, which houses a staggering collection of out of copyright embroidery designs.  This was one of them.  If you like fancywork, as my nanna calls it, then you will LOOOOOVE this flickr site.  Email me if you can’t find the address.

Once I had stitched my design, I placed it on a layer of wadding and cross hatched the centre with quilting.  It’s a bit hard to see, so I apologise for that.

Trim design to a square measuring roughly 12.5”.  Stitch a border on either side.  Mine were about 2.5” x 12.5”.

Stitch a border on the end.  Mine was 2.5” wide again by about 16.5”.

Stitch a piece to the opposite end of the design, so that it measures about 16.5” x 32” when complete (seriously, just an approximate is fine).

Cut the same sized piece from backing fabric and wadding, pin the three layers together and quilt as desired.  Mine was in the ditch around the main square and then in big straight lines for a while (till I got bored)

Trim the three layers to measure the same size.  Mine finished off about 16” x 32”.  Again – it doesn’t really matter how big your design is, as long as when it’s folded, the main applique design sits nicely in the centre.

Cut two rectangles of wadding about 2” smaller in size than your design (in my case, about 15” x 30”.  Find the middle of your block holder and mark with a pin.  Find the middle of the wadding and centre the middle over the middle of the block holder.  Stitch in place (if you look really carefully you should see a stitching line in the middle of my wadding.

Make some ties by cutting 1” x 12” strips, folding them over and topstitching all the rough ends down and stitching them in place.

Bind your design.  I used 2.5” strips folded in half.  Just the way you would do your quilts.

Handstitch binding in place, give it all a good press, fold it in half and do up your ties, and there you go!  A lovely block holder.

When the weather cools down, I think I’ll make a better tutorial and show it off – but for now, I hope this one will do.  I don’t think I missed any steps, but if you do find some, please let me know!

Till tomorrow,

Happy quilting!

Suzie