Rainbow Checkerboard Baby Quilt Tutorial

This quilt is a rainbow checkerboard baby quilt, but also has directions for using larger strips to make a bed size quilt.

Sometimes when I make quilts (and therefore when I write tutorials or patterns) I know exactly what size I want the finished quilt to be, and work backwards to figure out how much fabric is needed.

This is not that tutorial! 

This time I started with a pack of rainbow strips that were given to me, so my fabric supply was finite, and I worked with what I had, not knowing what size the finished quilt would be.

Rainbow Checkerboard Baby Quilt Tutorial

Spoiler: The finished quilt is 40” by 48” and requires 14 rainbow strips, 14 black strips, and 5 binding strips.

Note – if your fabric is less than 42”, or if it has a wide selvage, or if your cutting isn’t precise, you won’t be able to get 6 cuts of each size from each strip.  Two extra rainbow strips and two extra black strips will give enough extra to make up the difference.

My aunt gave me this really pretty pack of 14 strips (2½” by 42”), two each of seven colors.  I added in 14 strips of a variety of white and gray on black fabrics to create a rainbow checkerboard effect.

Sewing Strips

Pair each of the rainbow fabric strips with a black strip, and sew along the length of the strips, always with the rainbow strips on top.

Repeat with all 28 strips to make 14 strip sets.  Press towards the black fabric on all strip sets.

Pair two strips sets (with different rainbow colors and different black strips).

Again, sew the strips together, and again, keep the rainbow strip on top.  Doing so helps to keep fabric stretching to a minimum, which will help your blocks and quilt top to lay flat.  What you are actually doing here is alternating the direction you are sewing.  But that last sentence can be kind of a confusing (no, you aren’t sewing BACKWARDS) so it is much more simple to tell you to always keep your rainbow strip on top, but it leads to the same result.

Honestly, if you’re feeling a little contrary, sew with your black strip on top.  It doesn’t really make a difference, just pick one and stick with it.  The results will be the same either way.

I didn’t take a photo of this step (oops!) but continue sewing all of your strip sets together.  Again, press towards the black fabric.

Making Blocks

Use your ruler to cut a 4½” unit and a 2½” unit from your strip set.

Repeat, to cut six pieces of each size, from each strip set.

Note – if your fabric is less than 42”, or if it has a wide selvage, or if your cutting isn’t precise, you won’t be able to get 6 cuts of each size from each strip.  Two extra rainbow strips and two extra black strips will give enough extra to make up the difference.

Working two at a time, pair the 2½” unit with a 4½” unit, taking care to mix and match colors and patterns for maximum variety.  Your 2½” unit should always have a black square on the left, your 4½” unit should always have a rainbow rectangle on the left before pinning.

Pin half of your pieces with the small unit on top, and half with the larger unit on top.  Take care to pin all seams.

Why half and half?  The same reason I told you to always sew with the rainbow strip on top in an earlier step.  It’s going to help keep everything nice and flat, and it’s also going to make it so that all of your seams can be nested when you sew the blocks into rows.

Sew and then press towards the piece that was on top while sewing.

After sewing all of your units together, sort them into two piles, those that are pressed towards the small piece, and those that are pressed towards the large piece.

Take two units from the same pile and sew them together.  Sew as before.  That is, if the 2½” piece was on the top in the last step, sew with it on the top again in this step.  If the 4½” piece was on the top, it should be again as well.

Well done!  Now you’ve got a completed block!  Repeat to make 20 total blocks.

Putting It All Together

Place your blocks, all blocks with a 2½” piece across the top and a 4½” piece across the bottom.

As much as possible, alternate your blocks for ease of matching seams when sewing blocks together.

However, keep in mind fabric placement.  At this stage of the game, I think getting fabrics placed pleasingly is more important than always having nestled seams.   Yes, seams that go together easily, with seam allowance in opposite directions fit tighter more snugly and will make for crisper points.  But also, my quilt ended up with similar fabrics right next to each other, and I wish they were spread out a bit.  Six to one, half of a dozen to the other.

Sew blocks together, then into rows, and then into the rainbow checkerboard quilt top.

Baste, quilt and bind.  Easy, peasy baby quilt that measures 40” by 48”.

How easy?  Well, I made the whole thing in a day!  Keeping in mind, there wasn’t a whole lot of cutting, since half of my fabric was already in strips, but still, start to quilt top in a day, and quilt top to finished in another day is pretty awesome!

Checkerboard Quilt: The Purple and Gray Version

In fact, I enjoyed making this quilt so much, and loved how it looked, that after finishing, I turned around and immediately started cutting fabric for a second version!

That quilt looks like this:

This version was made with larger (wider) strips but all of the same steps for building the blocks.  I’ve got the whole tutorial, typed up in a nice PDF, with fabric requirements for both sizes of strips and several different finished quilt sizes, all the way from baby up to bed sized.

This is the link to the Purple and Grey Quilt Pattern Tutorial, with fabric requirements for multiple sizes from baby blanket up to king size bed quilt.