a quick walk-through of the quilt-as-you-go method

I think a lot of people are put off of sewing a whole bed quilt, or even a picnic blanket, because the thought of scrunching all that fabric through the small throat of a home sewing machine seems daunting.

And having been a person who has done just that, yes, it's something to be attempted only if you really want to see it happen. And the end result won't be as professional as you envision going in. Or at least mine haven't--and I've made a lot of attempts.

The alternate method is to piece your quilt in small sections, and then sew them all together at the finish.  I made my fox face throw in this method, and took photos along the way so you can see it's not as difficult as you might think.

You take one quilt block, and sew it directly on to your batting material. There is no backing at this point, just the quilt block and batting. I cut my batting large enough for two blocks.

 I quilted one block down, using the straight line method. Then I seamed my second block to the first, right sides together, flipped the block onto onto the batting, gave it a press with my iron, and sewed my quilting lines perpendicular to the first one.

I sewed all my blocks in this method, 16 of them, 2 at a time.

I cut off the excess batting, and joined my blocks into squares of four.

Here I flipped up a corner so you can see there is no backing fabric yet.

Then I sewed my four big blocks together into the complete quilt top. I added a four-inch wide fabric border to all sides, also using the same quilt-as-you-go method.  Then I pinned the top to my backing fabric, and quilted on only two seams; you can of course hold on the backing as securely as you like, but for my purposes the top is what mattered and the backing is not so important.

Does seeing it put together in this method make it seem more do-able to you? I hope so! You can buy the pattern for my Tumble of Foxes quilt on craftsy!