Sophie Tumbler Quilt

It's here!  My Sophie fabric from Clothworks.  I won this awesome fabric from the Clothworks blog.  In exchange for me receiving this fun vintage looking fabric, I got to write a tutorial AND do a give away of each of the fabrics I used in this quilt top!  Scroll to the end to skip the tutorial and enter my drawing. (the giveaway is over)

 It arrived all cute and tied up with a bow.

 These are the fat quarters I got to play with.

So.... without further ado- here's my tutorial for a Sophie Tumbler Quilt. 

First, wash, dry, and iron all your fabrics the way the quilt will be washed.  I threw my fabrics in with a load of towels.

Here's what you'll need to make this same quilt (finished size is 36x48)

*Fat quarters (12)

*Sizzix big kick/big shot machine

*Sizzix tumbler die and cutting plates

*Thread- I used  Coats & Clark #8020, #6340, & #1180

*Quilt binding- I used Wrights brand in Leaf color- 2 packs

*I used spray basting- it's great stuff!

*Alternately you can use quilters safety pins (I used both spray and pins, I wanted the fabrics to stay put!)

*Straight edge

*Rotary cutter and scissors

*Pins

*Quilt batting- I like warm and natural or warm and white

*Backing fabric- I used 1.5 yds of Kona Cotton in Baby Pink

 

 I laid out my tumbler shapes to figure out how many I could get from each fat quarter.  Turns out 4 across and 4 down is PERFECT.  So, I got 16 tumblers from each quarter.

Cut your fabric into 5" x 18" strips.  If possible make them a little wider, maybe 5 1/8- 5 1/4 to give a little wiggle room.  I use a rotary cutter and my husbands drafting T-square to get nice straight lines.

All stacked up ready to go thru the die cutter.

To cut the fabric, layer a cutting plate, the die with the cutting surface up, the fabric (doesn't matter which way it goes unless you have directional fabric), other cutting plate.  You can cut 8 layers at a time!  Talk about a time saver!  I had to use a few paper shims in my machine to get it to cut thru all 8 layers.  

Cut the layers by alternating the direction the die faces to save fabric.  I got 4 (4.5") tumblers out of 18" of fabric!  This is what the fabric looks like all punched out.

This is all the waste from all the cutting!  Not much.

The fabric piles all neatly cut out and stacked.

Play with the fabrics to find a pattern you like.  I thought about doing stripes down but decided against that and went with a repeating diagonal instead.  One day I'll do one with stripes because it looks fun.

Pin the neighboring tumblers together.  They'll be offset.  That's ok.  After they're stitched it will be straight.  Alternating rows will go different ways too.  Weird but go with it.  I like to pin a whole row into pairs before I start sewing.  Saves me time.

I stacked up a bunch of my rows so I could chain stitch them. 


Sew with a 1/4" seam allowance.  I just put my needle all the way to the left and used the inside of the presser foot as my allowance.  It's close.  Doesn't have to be perfect, just consistent.  I sew pairs and then I pin all the pairs together and sew those to get a strip. 

This makes it easy to go back and pin the pairs together.

 You can barely see it, but there are pieces of painters tape with numbers on them.  I put this at the beginning of each row so I know what goes where if they get all mixed up.  Don't iron on the tape, it might get stuck badly and put sticky on your fabric.  I just pull it off and stick it to me when I'm ironing and then stick it back to the fabric.

Iron all your seams open.  Enjoy the steam facial.  :)

To sew the rows together, match up corners as best you can.  Using the die makes it SUPER easy to get nice neat corners.  I did one with tumblers cut by hand and the corners were a mess!  Sew with a 1/4" allowance again.

If you get strings thru to the front, just flip it over and pull them to the back.  I like to check this every row so I don't have to do it at the end.

Iron all your seams open again.

Rows sewn in pairs.

Row pairs sewn into a 6 row.  This is half of the quilt.

Once you sew the other half to the first half you've finished the top!

 Cut the edges off to make it a nice straight edge.  If you want, you can leave them on and make it wavy edged.  I didn't want to try and do bias binding around the pointy parts so I made mine rectangle shaped.

Lay your batting down and smooth it out.

I didn't take a picture of this, but spray the back of your quilt top in a criss cross pattern with quilting adhesive.  Smooth it out over the batting making sure to get all the bumps out.  Flip it over and smooth out the back too.  This is easier to do with 2 people if you have a really big quilt.  Trim around the top leaving about 1" of batting on all sides sticking out.

Lay out your backing fabric and smooth that out.

Again, spray the quilt top and the batting on the batting side.  Smooth it out over the backing fabric making sure to get all the creases and wrinkles out.

 Pin the layers together in every other tumbler.  It's probably not necessary to pin it since the spray was used but I don't want my fabrics getting wonky.

I quilted my quilt before adding the binding.  If you're going to tie it and not quilt it you can add the binding first.  I like to tie before I bind because it might take up some fabric and then it'll be all wonky.  Since I have a regular old machine, I rolled the quilt to the middle and started there.  I just did straight stitch in the ditch (along the seams) for this quilt and then went back and did along all the edges of the tumblers.

All quilted!

After I'm done quilting, I like to zig zag around the whole thing just to hold the edges together when I'm adding my binding.  I don't know that this is necessary but I do it.

 All zig zagged and the excess fabric cut off all the way around.

 To start the binding, I like to iron the edges in a little to give me a nice end to finish with.  I fold in 1" on the end and then fold the corners down and iron well.

This quilt used 2 packages of binding so I just joined the 2 strips making sure to put them the same way.  Iron the seam open.  I can't seem to get the hang of diagonal joining and this works, so I go with it.

Starting at the mid point of one side (I usually use the bottom) pin down the binding.  Get the edge as far into the fold on the binding as you can.  Make sure the "wider" side is on the bottom so you catch it as you sew the top.  Trust me, it matters.  Start sewing about 2-3" from the end.  Here, I started at the edge of the maroon tumbler.  When you get to the corner, stitch JUST TO the edge not going past it even one stitch.  Make a mitered corner.  I love this tutorial for making mitered corners.  It works!  Continue on around all the sides, mitering the corners when you get to them.

When you get back to where you started, fold back the starting couple of inches and tuck the end you're sewing in to it pinning well.  Flip the part you folded back over the tail and pin the heck out of it to make it stay.  Sew over the whole thing back to the starting point and finish with a reverse or two to lock the threads.

The finished quilt.  :)

After a trip thru the washer and dryer to get all snuggly soft.

This quilt is for Ally, my daughter.  She loves it!

Now for the give away!  Leave me a comment (and way to get a hold of you- email is fine I promise not to stalk ya!) with what you would make from this fabric.  You'll get 12 fat quarters of Sophie fabric (pictured below)!  Give away closes on Monday, June 24 at midnight pacific time.  A name will be drawn on Tuesday morning (by Ally) and the winner will be posted here.  Good luck!  :)  Give away is over.

The winner is: Comment #7.  I threw out comment #3 since it was removed, giving me 23 comments.  TIVI!  YOU WIN!  Enjoy the fabrics!  :)