Dog Quilt Closeup We’ve had a fantastic response to our Sashiko Inspired Quilt Block series and questions are flooding in! Join us in this blog post as we explain how to use these fun blocks in your projects.  A WORD ABOUT THESE BLOCKS. These blocks were created and designed to enhance your embroidery projects. They are NOT “edge to edge” or continuous quilting patterns. That is a special niche. Those types of patterns are available on the internet from other companies, but mine is not one of them. ☺ These quilt blocks were designed to be created in the hoop, and your quilt top to be constructed first. THEN you would add your backing and “stitch in the ditch” and bind as desired. Therefore, the quilting does NOT go through to the back of the quilt. Again, the blocks are designed to be constructed and stitched together as the quilt top BEFORE you add your backing. Got it? GREAT! Read on! My mission? CHARLIE’S PUPPY QUILT! My daughter and her husband recently had our yellow lab, Bella, go to live with them. This is Charlie’s first dog! They are quickly becoming BFF’s. I decided to make the puppy quilt to celebrate this.  I will take you along step by step in making this sweet quilt for my grandson, Charlie. Isn’t he cute??? Charlie Here is Charlie getting to know Bella!    Charlie’s quilt consists of 25 blocks. I used the 8 inch size and chose not to use sashing. I used the same sashiko pattern for every block because my daughter, Lizzie, loves the honeycomb pattern and wanted it throughout the quilt. Many of the applique designs used in this quilt are from our “Crazy Dogs Applique” design set. One design, the dog house, will be released later this year. The puppy in the circle was designed for me exclusively and will be a FREEBIE soon in our Designs by JuJu Embroidery Blessings Group on Facebook JOIN US!  Each block was constructed separately in the hoop ie; “ITH”. Before we begin, let’s talk about some supplies in this video:   I get my supplies from www.allstitch.net I’m very happy with them. Their shipping is fast and I’ve never been disappointed. I buy my no show poly mesh in pre-cut sheets. As a digitizer who does a ton of sampling, it’s faster for my testers and I to have the sheets pre-cut. I love these double curved scissors from Gingher too!  **PLEASE NOTE: I used and like the Warm and Natural batting. My tester, Margie, uses Hobbs 80/20 blend. She feels it is softer and has a better drape. That may be the case for more dense stippling designs. I have been very happy with the Warm and Natural batting. The decision is yours! 

STITCHING YOUR QUILT BLOCK 

1. Decide which size blocks you will be making. I used the blocks for the 8 inch hoop. Please see size description on website and be aware of the EXACT size of the block. These were created to fit in different hoops. Therefore, the 8 inch exact size is 7.75 x 7.75. It was 8 x 8 exactly, it wouldn’t fit in an 8 inch hoop due to sewing field restrictions. ☺ Just something to be aware of!  2. Hoop a piece of no show mesh stabilizer as shown. 3. The first step in the design will stitch a placement line for your batting.   step1   4. Lay down your batting to cover the placement line. The machine will now stitch down your batting. step-2-photo   5. Now it’s time to trim away the excess batting (just as you would trim away excess fabric in the applique cutaway method) step-3-photo   6. Next, lay down your fabric that will be used for the background of the square. Make sure you leave at least ½ inch all around. I use a little more and then square it up later. step-4-photo   7. The machine will now stitch down your fabric with a tackdown line. step-5-photo   8. Now for the fun part! The next step will quilt your quilting pattern. For all of our quilt blocks so far, please see this link. step-6-photo 9. For this quilt, I stitched 12 different background blocks, and also did applique designs on top of 13 of them. Quilt Layout   10. If desired, now you can LEAVE THE BLOCK IN THE HOOP, and do an applique over it! You can either customize in your embroidery software so the quilting design and applique are “one design” or just bring in your applique and applique it over. I have found that the no show mesh, soft but stable Warm and Natural batting, and the background fabric make a nice surface to do your applique on.  See what I have to say about this in this video: applique1 applique2   11. Next, I laid out my quilt blocks to my liking. Quilt Layout   12. Now it’s time to stitch our blocks together and construct the quilt top! 13.  Arrange your quilt blocks out how you would like the quilt top to look.  14. Begin stitching the blocks in the top row together, right sides together. row-1-photo 15. Press your seams. 16. Now stitch your rows together in the same manner. row2photo Press seams. Your quilt top is complete! completedtop completedtopback 17. **This quilt did not use any sashing or borders. You may choose to do so with the quilt you make. If so, GREAT! There are tons of resources on the internet on quilt making. We encourage you to use the pattern and methods that best suit you. The purpose of this tutorial was to show you how to construct the blocks and stitch the top. 18. Finally, apply a backing to your quilt. Some people will use another layer of batting at this point. I chose not to. I’m backing it with a nice minky fabric. Baste the backing and top together with basting pins and “stitch in the ditch” in the block seams of the quilt. minkyfront minkyback 19. Bind your quilt according to your preferred method. I will be self binding with the minky backing. There are tons of awesome tutorials on binding and backing on the net. I love YouTube! ENJOY!!!!