Stuff you didn't know you could do...: Curtains Continued... or are they?

Hello Everyone,

So when I left off with the last post we were sorting blocks into strips. For the next steps I'm going to start at 1.

After you have your blocks sorted into the design that you wish, use straight pins to pin the blocks into strips. A strip looks like the following picture, a strip can be two or more blocks long. Place one pin for ever two squares as shown.

Sew the blocks together. The closer you get your corners the better the quilt will look. This is kind of like color in the lines, pirate law is that it's more like a guide line. Do not sew the pins! Of course if you were to hit a pin your needle will, in the best of circumstances, just bend and not break. Worst circumstance is your needle breaks and now you need to take the needle out and replace it!
Now match match the strips in the order you want them to go. You do not need pins for this step.
When you are done sewing the strips together you have what is called a panel. This is one of my panels. This is when my husband saw them and decided that he wants a blanket instead. So I smiled and said OK :) <--- Happy he decided this before I did the next step, but at the same time aggravated because I now have to go seam rip 3 strips off.

When seam ripping you want to be sure not to tare the fabric. Use your seam ripper along the seam cutting the thread in between blocks. If you do it is not a big deal, you can patch it, but if you can help it you do not want to do this.
When patching use a piece of fabric about a 1/2 in larger then the hole in all directions. Sew the patch all around the hole. Then use a wide short zig-zag stitch, go over the hole.
Ok now that you rearrange you blocks/strips so it makes more of a blanket shape you want to iron the panel.
Now go back to the store to get batting, the middle fluffy stuff, and fabric for you backing, quilt back. You are going to buy enough of each to go over the edges about at least an inch and a half. Consider how thick you'll want it to be. The thicker the batting the warmer the quilt of course.
When you get home the first thing you do is wash, dry, and iron your fabric.
Trim your frayed edges. Sew the back panel so it is a little larger then the front panel. You can trim excess fabric, remember save your scraps you can use them later.
Now you want to find a large empty flat space you be able to spread your quilt out on. Decide how you would like to do your main outer binding edge. The one I will be doing is folding and hemming the back up to the top.
Now depending on how you want to bind the outer edge you layer your panels and batting if your doing it like me, lay all layers out like a blanket you would normally use. Make sure every layer is flat before the next layer is down.

Back panel on the bottom
batting
top panel

Now use either quilting safety pins or straight pins. The quilting safety pins are like normal safety pins only bent so that they can be used to pin a quilt, they also hurt less if you accidentally bump while sewing the center binding. You want to pin every block. Remember this is holding everything together till you sew in the ditches, bar-tacks in corners, or tie corners with yarn, depending on how you plan on doing that. You do not want any of these binding options to be more then one block a part, ask the quilt fabric shop how far apart they recommend because this depends on your batting.

Stitch in the ditch means to sew along a seam of the quilt.
Bar-tacking is when you sew about 4 stitches forward and a backwards stitch on the corners of your blocks.
Yarn ties are when you use yarn to hold all the layers together, tie this in a square knot.

Complete your stitching in the ditch, bar-tacking, or tying now always working from the center out. This is one of the pirate rules that I have been taught. The following picture is the result of my stitch in the ditch. You can also see how it is layered.