Quick and Easy Charm Square Baby Quilt

I'm back today with a quick finish and a tutorial.  I needed to make a baby quilt for a co-worker at work, but after many hours of paper piecing this past week, I just wanted a quick and easy pattern.  I had a bunch of charm squares (5" square) leftover from a fat quarter bundle of Maritime Modern by Riley Blake that I had already made 2 baby quilts from (you can see the first and the second here) and I thought that a disappearing 9-patch fit the bill perfectly.  

Here is a quick tutorial so that you can just grab your supplies and start piecing to have a baby quilt finished in no time:

Finished size: 39" x 39"
This size is wonderful for a quick baby quilt because you can use a single width 
fabric for the backing, no piecing of the back :)

Materials needed:

• 81 charm squares (5" square). You can use scraps or 2 Moda charm packs
• 1 ¼ yards backing
• ⅜ yards binding
• 42" x 42" batting (I pieced together some batting scraps for mine)

Piecing Instructions:

Step 1:  Sew your charm squares into 27 sets of 3 charm squares each.

Step 2: Sew 3 charm square sets together forming a 9 patch.  Repeat to form 9 total 9-patches.

Here are all of the 9-patches laid out together.  You could sew the 9-patches together for a great simple patchwork quilt top (like is shown here at the bottom of the post).

Step 3: Cut each 9-patch in half once horizontally and vertically.  The cut should be 7" from the side and 2 ¼" from the inner seam.

Step 4:  Mix the cut blocks up in any new 6 block x 6 block arrangement.  Here are two options I tried.  I decided on the more randomly mixed up version.

Step 5:  Sew the blocks into rows and then sew rows together.  I prefer to press my seams open so that the quilt top lays flatter.

Step 6:  Layer the quilt top, batting, and backing together.  Quilt as desired.  I decided to go with a random hook/wave looking pattern to mimic some of the wave designs in the fabric.

Step 7:  Form the binding from 5 strips 2 ½ x WOF. (I was actually able to make the binding using only 4 strips with just a couple inches to spare).

For the binding, I tried glue basting with Elmer's glue and using the machine to stitch down the binding (I almost always hand stitch the binding).  It worked great and I got very nice, crisp edges and corners.  I will be employing this method more in the future.

Congrats, you have a super quick, but great looking quilt ready for your special someone!

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, if you have any questions, please e-mail me or leave a comment below.

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