Another Quick Baby Quilt Tutorial

I’m back with a new tutorial to share this week, a fan favorite – another quick baby quilt tutorial!

This checkerboard quilt block is easy enough for a beginner to make! It looks great, is quick, and can be adjusted to any width of fabric strip.  All together that makes it another quick baby quilt perfect for a step-by-step tutorial!

Fabric Selections

I made my quilt from my stash, using a variety of reds, greens, and blues, with a fun teal swiss dot on white as my background fabric.

Fabric strips the width of fabric are great. As are smaller scraps.

I chose to cut my fabric strips to 2” wide to accommodate this one red piece of fabric.

You could use jelly rolls (2½” strips) or even larger strips if desired.  They all need to be cut the same width, but what that width is is up to you.

What about the length of fabric?  Use it all!  Some of my fabric was 40”-42” long, other pieces were only 6” or so.  It will be easy enough to mix and match different lengths in another step.

I always like the pile of scraps that comes from trimming fabric strips.  It helps me to see that I have a good balance of colors that will work well with each other in the finished quilt.

How Much Fabric Do I Need?

My checkerboard baby quilt measures 42” by 54” and uses 63 quilt blocks. 

I needed 26 fabric strips of background fabric and 26 fabric strips of colors because 20 squares can be sub-cut from each 2” by 40” strip of fabric.  Four strips of fabric will make 5 blocks at this size, and each block will measure 6” square when finished.

If you use jelly roll strips, you’ll be able to get 4 blocks from 4 fabric strips, and the squares will measure 8” finished.

You can definitely use any size fabric strip, but a little bit of math might be needed when using fabric strips a different size than mine.

Making Checkerboard Quilt Blocks

The quilt blocks in this quick baby quilt tutorial are made of 8 backgrounds squares and 8 colorful squares, set 4 by 4 in a quilt block called a 16-patch.  Alternating the colors with the background gives the checkerboard effect.

While you could absolutely sew those 16 individual squares together, it’s faster to sew the fabric strips together before sub-cutting the smaller squares.

Sew a colorful fabric strip to a background fabric strip using a ¼” seam allowance.

Press towards the colorful fabric.  Repeat to make a variety of fabric pairs.  It’s okay if the colorful fabric strip and background fabric strip aren’t the same length.

Place two fabric pairs right sides together, and make sure the seams are nestled in the center.

Sub-cut the pairs at the same size as the fabric strips. For example, I cut my fabric strips 2”, so now I am sub-cutting my pairs also at 2”. I can get 20 sub-cuts from a fabric strip that is 40”.

If your fabric strips were 2½”, sub-cut at 2½”, you’ll get 16 from each strip pair. 3” fabric strips?  3” sub-cuts.  And so on.

Pin at the seam and sew two pairs together using a ¼” seam allowance.

That’s the beginning of a checkerboard quilt block!

I like to trim my little squares at this stage. It’s just a little sliver to trim from each side, but when it comes to joining 4 of these little guys to make the quilt block, those little slivers can add up to make the quilt block not quite the right size.

Yes, it’s an extra step. It slows me down a bit at this point.  But it makes the blocks go together into the quilt top more smoothly later, so I think it’s worth it.

From 4-Patch to Quilt Block

Make sure the neutral fabric patches are both in the upper left and place two little 4-patches together.

It’s a little hard to see, but you want that seam to nestle. You can make this happen by checking that the seam on the right is pressed one direction, and the seam on the left pressed the other.  Making all blocks the same will help future seams to nestle together too, but right now you are mostly focused on the seam you are about to sew.

Even nestled together, make sure to pin that seam before sewing!

Make blocks using the same tips as previous steps; nestle and pin those seams.

Repeat to make as many as needed.  The blocks are 6½” and will finish at 6” on the quilt top.

My quilt used 63 blocks in 9 rows of 7 and measured 42” by 54”. 

A larger quilt will need more blocks, a smaller quilt will need less.

Putting The Quilt Top Together

Scout is here to let you in on a little secret. I don’t typically sew my quilt blocks together into rows.

I usually start with sewing two blocks together.  Highlighted in yellow in the photo below.

But then, instead of sewing to the blocks next to them, I typically also make a pair out of the two blocks below, and then sew those into a square.

This way things don’t get wonky. There aren’t any less seams to match overall, but they go together in smaller and more manageable bunches.

I love this quilt design so much that I wanted to keep it for myself! 

I didn’t, it was for a coworker’s baby boy, I couldn’t steal it away from him.

But I wanted to!

I’ve written up some tutorials on quilting straight lines and using a kitchen knife to mark the lines. 

On this quilt I sewed diagonal lines moving up on the colorful squares and moving down on the white squares.

I did not sew right along the diagonal. Instead, I had the left side of the sewing machine foot lined up with the diagonal. This means that the actual needle was about ¼” to the right of that.