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Guess who is hopping on the Quilt Block Sweatshirt train? I’ve asked my friend, Nicole, of Modern Handcraft to scale her Big Love Quilt down into a single quilt block that will fit on the back of a sweatshirt! Even though there are a few days left until the Valentine’s day – you can easily make this in an hour or two!
Grab the Big Love pattern here! Grab your scrap bin because that’s all you need! If you are not a fan of trimming half square triangle blocks I can not recommend this trimmer enough!
Changes to make to the pattern to make this quilt block:
We'll use the Small Quilt version and leave the bottom row of the quilt off. Any 9" dimensions should be changed to 3" and any 8.5" dimensions should be changed to 2.5". Follow the rest of the pattern for assembly.
XOXO Sweatshirt
I now a lot of you will ask where I got this adorable XOXO sweatshirt from! We have a lovely boutique in Alexandria called Creative Touch Boutique and I swung by one day and new this would make for the perfect foundation of a Quilt Block Sweatshirt. You can grab one here for yourself, they are on sale right now!
Phosphor by Libs Elliott
Okay, so I had some bits and pieces of a Libs Elliott’s Phosphor in my scrap bin from a stardust mini quilt that I whipped up and will be featured on the blog post next week! Phosphor has the look of denim without the actually texture. I wanted to keep this strictly to the warm tones typically found with Valentines along with some yummy orange! It reminds me of all the Fanta soda colors. It’s fabulous and comes in all the neon colors that you could ever want! I had some off white Bella Solids Moda in my scrap bin so that’s what I used for the heart.
Batting or Interfacing?
I was totally winging this quilt block sweatshirt thing. I’ve never dipped my toe in the quilted clothing trend. So this is my debut! I wanted that quilty puff that quilts are desired for. With that goal in mind I decided to go with batting. I think some other people use only interfacing and that’s cool – but it wasn’t the final look I was going for. So I went ahead sandwiched my block with a scrap piece of batting and a light colored backing. I quilted everything before attaching to the sweatshirt.
Attaching The Quilt Block
Placement
You may laugh at this, but when I was figuring out where to place the block. I put my sweatshirt on and then looked in the mirror at my back. I decided where I wanted the block to fall on the sweatshirt. I then placed a straight pin where I wanted the top corners of the block to be placed. I removed the sweatshirt and then centered everything from there. For me that meant 4" down from the neck seam of my sweatshirt.
Zig-Zag Stitch vs. Fold Over
Here is where I experimented and have some tips to pass along to you. At first, I thought I would be able to fold over the quilt top and sew along the edge with a small seam allowance, catching the raw edge under the block in the process….I have never been more wrong - the batting was really wanting to lay flat (surprise, not!). The top of the quilt ended up fine, but once I got to the second edge of my block I had decided to switch to a zig-zag stitch to catch the raw edge, inside the stitches. I used a stitch length of 1.6 to get a nice tight stitch. If I were to do another quilt block sweatshirt I would start with the zig-zag all the way through to capture the raw edge of the block and maybe even tighten the stitch down even further but it wouldn't be necessary.
Quilting
I really wanted to have a Heart Pantograph designed by this project, but time is in short supply these days. I ended up using the Abstract Hearts design that I have in my library and LOVE how it gives a unique custom quilt look – but it’s a digital design!
Sign up for Quilting Services
If you’d like me to help out adding quilting to your quilt check out my long arm quilting information page to send your quilt in! If you have any questions about quilting feel free to email me and I’m more than willing to help you out.
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