Kelly’s Pearl Bracelet baby quilt tutorial

Kelly from Jeli Quilts loves a good rainbow, so we let her loose with the brightest Pearl Bracelets in the new collection by Lizzy House. Lucky me – she made a baby quilt and I don’t have to give it back! Read on for her fabulous tutorial. Thanks Kelly!

I love the Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets and jumped at the chance to create a baby quilt with them when Annie offered.

Supplies:

• 2.5 metres of Kona solid for background and backing (I used Medium grey)
• 12 fat 1/8ths – for feature squares, backing and binding. (I used a lovely bundle of Pearl Bracelet brights)
• Cot sized wadding

Pearl Bracelet fat 1/8ths and Medium grey Kona

Cutting instructions for the quilt top:

From the grey Kona background cut the following:
4 x (3.75 x 13.5″)
6 x (3.75 x 10.5″)
4 x (3.75 x 7″)
4 x (3.75 x 3.75)
2 x (3.75 x 16.75″)
2 x (3.75 x 23.35″)
3 x (3.75 x 29.75″)
For the borders cut:
2 x (3.5 x 36.25″)
2 x (3.5 x 42.25″)
From the 12 fat 1/8ths:
Cut 2 3.75″ squares from each of the fat 1/8ths so you end up with 24 x 3.75″ squares. I fussy cut round the a bracelet to show off the design.

Cutting instructions for feature fabric – Fussy cut Pearl Bracelets

Sewing the quilt top:

**1/4″ seam allowance is used throughout**

Sew into rows as follows:
(NB: The grey background is pieced in strips and not squares like the picture shows, I am still very much an EQ7 amateur!)

I pressed my seams to the side at this stage, alternating the direction with each row, so that when it came to sewing the rows together the seams butted together giving a better finish.

The eleven rows are then sewn together in order, this time pressing the seams open for a flatter finish to the quilt top:

I butted up my seams and pinned to avoid shifting when sewing the long rows together.

To finish the quilt top, add the border strips firstly to the left and right sides (3.75 x 36.25″) and then to the top and bottom of the quilt top (3.75 x 42.25″).
Backing, quilting and finishing the quilt:
You need the backing to be at least 2″ bigger than the quilt top (more if you want to FMQ because of shrinking).
For the back of this quilt, I took the off cuts from the fussy cut fat 1/8ths and sewed them together in colour order and trimmed them down to 4.5″ wide by 44″.
I took the remainder of the Kona grey and cut in half and then inserted the pieced strip.
I basted using 505 spray and quilted using a wavy wonky line pattern. (There is a great tutorial for the quilting method here.)

Wonky wavy quilting

Binding:

With so much grey in this quilt a bright scrappy binding was the perfect finishing touch and a great way to use up the remaining fabric from the fat 1/8ths.
Cut 2.5″ strips from each of the fat 1/8ths and sew together until you have approx 175-180″ in length.

Attach your binding by machine using a 1/4″ seam and then finish by hand or machine.

The finished quilt size is 41.75″ which shrinks to around 40″ once washed and all wrinkly.

Gorgeous! Thank you Kelly!