Single Block Quilt Tutorial Series - Windmill - Part 4, Block and Top Assembly, Batting, Basting, Quilting and Binding

Now that your windmill and background strips have been joined and sub-cut, it's time to assemble the blocks.  This is another easy process that will go quickly.

Following the above diagram:

1.  Sew two sub-cut units of the same windmill fabric together as shown in the first drawing on the left; one oriented horizontally, one vertically.  Do this two times.  Press seams toward the windmill fabric.

2.  Orient one of the sewn assemblies as shown in the second drawing and rotate the other sewn assembly 180 degrees from it as shown in the third drawing .  Sew these two assemblies together to complete the block.  It should look like the drawing on the right.  We'll press the final seams of the completed blocks after they are arranged.

Arrange your quilt blocks as desired and assemble the quilt top by sewing the blocks together, side by side until complete rows are formed.  Press the seams to one direction on the first row then alternate the pressing direction on the second row.  Continue sewing and pressing rows in alternate directions until they are complete.  Then sew each of the rows together, pressing these seams in the same direction until the entire top is finished.

Again, I've decided to rely on the expertise of some of my favorite quilters for their finishing techniques as I have a long arm machine, and therefore, basting and domestic machine quilting are not my specialty.

One of my all time favorites, Oh Fransson (Elizabeth Hartman) has an excellent tutorial on batting and basting.  Check out her  Making the Quilt Sandwich post and get a great lesson on this process.  If you are not familiar with Oh Fransson, be sure to peruse her entire site as it is chocked full of eye candy and practical lessons.

 For domestic machine quilting, I have to rely again on Elizabeth  Hartman.  Her Free-Motion Quilting Basics tutorial is just perfect for beginners.  Elizabeth's post also provides a link to the Modern Quilt Guild Blog, where her technique is expanded to work with larger quilts.

Lastly, for binding, I reference the Red Pepper Quilts blog Binding Tutorial.  Here Rita Hodge explains in detail her process for making and applying straight grain binding.  There are many different binding methods out there but in my opinion, Rita's yields the best results.

Happy sewing! Come back again for the next post to see the finished quilt!