I’m working on a cute quilt for a baby boy who is soon to enter the world. I love this pattern because it’s sew easy! Minimal seams to match, no triangles, and strip piecing make this 58” x 72” quilt go together very quickly. I also love it because it looks like I worked a lot harder than I did!

The pattern calls for only 30 of the 42 strips in the Rolie Polie (aka jelly roll), and 20 of the squares in the 5” stacker (aka charm pack). That leaves me enough to make pillows or other accessories, be choosy about the colors I use (for this one, I eliminated all the pink strips and squares) or add to my stash.

I’d like to share some tips and tricks that could help you if you decide to make a quilt from this pattern, or a similar one. You can find the free pattern here: https://bit.ly/Storytime30s.

Accurate cutting is important for the little bit of cutting you need to do. Since this pattern uses precuts, there’s only the background and binding fabric to cut. Once cut, I labeled them to help me keep them straight. Some of the rectangles are 2-1/2” wide, but some are 2-1/4” wide, so I didn’t want to get them confused.

I tend to veer a bit at the end of my seams. I’ve tried everything in the world to correct it, but the habit still affects my blocks. To compensate, I either cut my patches a little big or make sure I use a very scant ¼” seam. If I go the very scant route, I make sure to lower my stitch length to about 1.8 on my electronic sewing machine. You can see in the picture below how the top block is a little short. Instead of trying to match the edges, I sewed along the straighter of the two blocks.

While adding the first pieced strip to the framed 5" square, I saw there were no seams to match! Once I realized this, it helped me line up my pieced strips better, centering them more against the white background fabric. 

 When pressing the strip seams, I lined up with my very long ruler (from my local hardware store) to make sure I didn’t skew them into a curve.

The pattern warns at the beginning to carefully follow the pressing directions, but there don’t seem to be any until step 7. That’s because it really doesn’t matter so much until then. Because the seams in the pieced strips don’t have to match with anything, you can press whichever way works best for you. I pressed mine open, mainly because as a longarm quilter, I find the block lays flatter when seams are pressed open. I notice the difference in the loud (and somewhat nerve-wracking) ‘thunk’ my longarm needle makes when going over seams that are pressed to one side and overlap.

After sewing the pieced strips to both sides of my units, I had blocks that were oversized (yay!), so I trimmed them to 12-1/2” The ruler I have that is large enough didn’t have anything to keep it from sliding, so I sprayed the back with Odif Grippy. That stuff is amazing—no slipping at all. Plus, it dries quickly and lasts a long time. My rotating mat was helpful as well—it’s nice to have one large enough to rotate a 12-1/2” block.

I don’t like sewing long strips of sashing between rows unless they have cornerstones. It’s too difficult for me to match up the blocks on either side of those long sashing strips that run horizontally across the quilt.

Instead I cut:

• (20) 12-1/2” x 2-1/2” strips for the sashing between blocks for each row
• (15) 14-1/2” x 2-1/2” strips for the horizontal sashing strips

For the top row, I first sewed a 12-1/2” strip to the bottom of each block. Then, I sewed a 14-1/2” strip to the right of block one, then joined it to block 2 and so on. I did not sew a 14-1/2” strip to the right of the last block.

I continued in this fashion until the last row. For this row, I only sewed (3) 12-1/2” sashing strips between the (4) blocks.

Then, I pieced 2-1/2” strips together to make a long strip and treated the outer sashing like a border.

You can see a video with a similar approach by The Gourmet Quilter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sa-HeY4dNg. She uses cornerstones (this pattern does not), and she also treats her outer sashing differently, but I thought having a video might be helpful for some, especially if you are a visual learner like me.

I have to admit, I often modify my quilt-making steps from pattern directions. I guess I'm just a bit of a rebel. Do you do the same?