Little Bean Circle Quilt Tutorial and Bedroom Makeover

Here it is!  The beast that has consumed my crafting life since Christmas!

Purple explosion

A closer look

And of course, I couldn't put this loveliness in Layla's yellow baby room.  So, we had to buy a new bed and throw on a new coat of paint - and what else, purple!  Her favorite!  Here is a look at the rest of the room.

 

Close-up of Bunny art.

Reading nook...need more shelves.

Photo is "Layla" by my lovely friend Jill.

Usually about 20 more stuffed animals live on the bed...we compromised.

Hard to see, but there are sparkly butterflies hanging from the windows...love them!

Here is the quilt that started this whole thing from Garnet Hill:

This has been a project months in the making, literally.  I think I started this last spring or summer.  Firstly, let me say:  I am NOT a quilter.  I pretty much made up what I was doing as I went along and asked for advice from some friends and the local quilt shop when I needed input.  I am sure that real quilters would be disturbed by some of my methods.

That being said.  Here is how I did it...and I apologize there aren't pictures of everything, but I did my best.

Here is what you'll need for a twin size quilt:

• Queen size sheet for front
• Queen size sheet for back
• Several coordinating (or not) fabrics for the circles - I used six and needed just over 1/2 yard each
• Lightweight fusible interfacing (~6 yds.)
• Batting
• Pins
• LOTS and lots and lots of coordinating thread
• Safety pins
• Disappearing pen or fabric chalk
• CD

To save money, I started out with a king size white sheet for the front of the quilt (this was too much...a queen will do).  I looked several places online to find dimensions of quilts and I averaged them out and made mine 70" x 86" and it works great on Layla's twin bed.

Cut your sheet to these dimensions. Put aside.

Get out your lovely fabrics.

Next, iron your interfacing onto each of your coordinating fabrics (the back, obviously).  Start with 1/2 yard of each fabric...you can always make more later if you need to (I used 35 of each fabric).  How many you are going to need is going to depend on the spacing you choose (there are 208 on this one).

Now we are ready to start tracing out our circles.  I don't have a circle cutter, so I used a CD as a template. 

Plain old CD

 I traced circles on each fabric and cut them immediately so that my pen wouldn't disappear first.  Be precise when you cut your circles because there is no way to hide uneven edges!

Your circles will look like this.

This is the part that is very unconventional.  Get out the sheet that you cut previously.  We are going to use it in one piece...we are not making blocks.  Now start laying out your circles.  I completely eyeballed this since I am pretty good at that.  If you are more comfortable measuring, by all means do that.  This quilt has 16 circles on the length and 13 circles on the width.  They are about 1/2" apart.  I would leave 1" around all of the edges so that you have enough room for your binding.

We are going to attach the circles with safety pins for now.  I recommend only attaching about 20 at a time.  I found that this was pretty easy to work with.  It gets tricky if you have too many.

Now start sewing on your circles.  I used a zig-zag stitch in purple thread.

This is the part that took me months and months because I just did a few circles here and there and it was never really in the forefront of my mind.  It certainly doesn't need to take that long.

You should have something that looks like this when you are complete (ignore the extra fabric...not yet trimmed in this picture).

For the back, I used a purple sheet.  I did not pre-cut the sheet.  Instead I laid it out flat and then put the batting on top and then finally the quilted top on that.  Once I was sure everything was all smoothed out and even.  I pinned all around the edges.  Once I did this, I loosely cut both the batting and the backing...not worrying too much if there was still a bit of excess.

Now comes the quilting.  And yes, I was able to do this on my home machine.  I'm not sure that I would want to do much bigger of a quilt on this machine, but it worked out fine for a twin. 

I used the Quilting Foot that came with my machine (not the Walking Foot).  Be sure to lower your feed dogs so that you can move the quilt about freely on the machine. 

I started in the middle of the quilt and worked my way out.  Depending on what colors you choose, you may want to quilt the background one color and the circles another.  This is what I did.

I just did a free form loop-de-loop pattern.  It is really quite small on the background since I had to go through a lot of tight spaces.  But, I did it much bigger inside the circles.

The white background



The circles with purple thread



This does make the back of the quilt multi-colored, but I don't really want anyone looking at the back anyways (that's where all my mistakes are hiding).




Once you are done quilting, which, if you do like me, will take you quite a while, you need to trim up the edges so that all three layers are perfectly even.

Now you are ready to start binding.  Everyone told me that I had to make my own binding and then after they told me how to do it, I realized that all I would be doing was making bias tape.  So, why not just use bias tape?  Since I just wanted solid white, that's what I did.  I used 9 yards of extra wide double fold bias tape.

If you look at bias tape, you'll notice that one side is longer than the other.  You want the long side to be on the back of your quilt.  Unfold the bias tape and sew down the inside flap of the long side to the back of your quilt.  I found it easiest to do one side at a time.  Now fold you bias tape back up and over to the front side.  Sew all the way down the side you just worked on making sure to "catch" the bias tape on the back.

Since we are doing one side at a time, you will want to finish the corners as you go.  You can either miter the corners or you can do them square.  I played around with it and decided that I liked them squared the best.  Just fold over your ends and then overlap them in a square.  Sew down.

 And that's it.  Time to celebrate with a cocktail because you seriously deserve it.  Please let me know if you try this and of course send me pics!!!!