Easy Strip Quilt Tutorial

A strip quilt is a quick, easy and time-saving way to whip up a quilt and is the ultimate quilt for beginner quilters.

I made this strip quilt as a gift for a baby shower.  With less than two weeks to complete the quilt, that meant piecing it and quilting it,  I had to found a quilt pattern that I could sew quickly.  At my local quilt shop, a strip-pieced quilt was on display and I immediately realize it was the answer.

This quilt pattern can be used to make a quilt for a nursery, toddler, tween, teen, or adult just by varying the fabric choice.  In this tutorial, I'll show you how to make a strip quilt.

New to quilting?  Check out our Beginner Quilting Series.

Learn more about how to make this strip-pieced quilt by watching our video or keep reading this post for a photo tutorial with step-by-step instructions.

How to sew a strip quilt

STRIP QUILT STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1: Fabric Preparation

For the best result, you should prewash/preshrink the fabric.  If you want to prevent fraying when you wash the fabric, check out our tutorial. 

Once the fabric is washed, iron the fabric to remove wrinkles. 

STEP 4: Assembling Quilt Top

To piece the strips together, it is easier if you sew the top section and bottom section separately and then attach these sections to the middle feature fabric.  On a work surface, organize the top section of strips.   Grab the strips in the order to be sewn together and take them to the sewing machine.

At the sewing machine attach the quarter-inch piecing presser foot. Take the first strip and second strip, align the raw edges with the right sides together. Position the raw edges of the fabrics under the presser foot and begin sewing a 1/4" seam from edge to edge without backstitching. 

It is not necessary to backstitch at the end of the seam either since the quilt will have a binding and the edges will be concealed in the binding.

A quarter-inch presser foot is an essential tool for quilters.  Interested in purchasing a quarter-inch presser foot, Amazon has many at reasonable prices just be sure to purchase one that fits your sewing machine.

When normally sewing a quilt you press the seams after sewing them.  But since no seams will be intersecting, all the seams can be pressed after the quilt top is completely sewn together.

Repeat by laying the next strip on the previously sewn strips with pretty sides together.  Sew from edge to edge with a 1/4" seam.

Repeat this process for the remaining strips.

Then, sew the bottom section of the quilt together.  Finally, sew the top, middle and bottom sections together.

Once the quilt top is sewn, place it on the ironing board and press all the seams.  The seams can be pressed all in one direction,  toward the darker fabric or pressed open.  Flip over the quilt top and press the front side as well.

My finished quilt top

STEP 5: Quilt Sandwich

Layering the quilt is called a "quilt sandwich".  The three layers of a quilt are the backing, quilt batting, and quilt top. The three layers are shown below in this photo of our Easy Four Patch Quilt. At the end of this article is a link to our free Easy Four Patch Quilt tutorial.

The backing and batting should be at least 2 - 4" larger all the way around the quilt top. So add 4 - 8" to both the width and length measurements of the quilt top.

There are a few different types of fabric you can use for the quilt backing - cotton, flannel, muslin, Minky.  Cotton is overwhelming the most popular.  Since this quilt top is approximately 43" across, the backing fabric needed to be pieced together.

To determine how much fabric to purchase and how to piece the quilt backing, use one of the handy backing yardage calculators on our quilting calculators page.

To make the quilt sandwich, lay the backing fabric wrong side up on a table.  Layer the batting on top of the backing.  Finally, place the quilt top, right side up on top of the batting. 

Make sure everything is smooth and there are no wrinkles in the batting or backing layers.  Click to learn more about how to Layer and Pin Baste through our beginner quilt series tutorial.

Once the layers are basted together by either pins or long stitching, then it is ready to be quilted.

STEP 6: Quilting

The quilting is what holds the three layers together.  You can quilt it yourself by hand or by machine.  Another way is to send it to a professional long-arm quilter. 

With this quilt, I did not have the luxury of time.  It was necessary for me to quilt it myself.  So I decided to machine quilt it using the serpentine stitch.

Most sewing machines, today, have the serpentine stitch built into the machine.  On my Bernina machine, the stitch is number 4 and looks like this.  

When quilting with the serpentine stitch or when machine quilting in general,  using a walking foot will give you the best result. By machine quilting with a walking foot,  the fabric top, backing and batting will evenly feed through the machine and help prevent the layers from shifting as you quilt. 

If you don't have a walking foot, Amazon has many walking feet at reasonable prices but be sure to purchase one that fits your sewing machine.

Another important element when quilting is determining the spacing of the quilting.  Look on the batting package to find out the minimum amount of spacing between quilting and be sure you select a quilting pattern that meets the minimum.  The required quilt density can be anywhere from 5" to 10" separation but this all depends on the batting selected.

A tutorial on how to quilt using the serpentine stitch is here. 

 Besides the serpentine stitch, some other popular methods are  stitch-in-the-ditch,  meandering, straight-line quilting, free-motion quilting, stitching a motif design and quilting with decorative stitches that come with your machine.

STEP 8: Binding

To finish the quilt, a binding is added around the edge.  The binding covers the raw edges left on the quilt sandwich layers.  Bindings can be sewn on to the quilt entirely with a sewing machine or with a sewing machine and finished by hand sewing.

But before binding the quilt, trim the excess batting and backing from each side of the quilt and square up all four corners. Scissortail Quilting has an excellent tutorial on how to do this.

The type of binding you use on a quilt is a personal preference.  Some binding methods can be sewn onto the quilt completely by machine.  Other methods require hand sewing.  

Some different types of binding methods are Quick Binding, Double Fold Binding, Scrappy Quilt Binding, faux flange binding.

We have another tutorial that discusses binding methods by clicking the link.

For my quilt, I made a double fold binding by cutting strips 2 1/2" wide.  I then joined the strips together to make one continuous strip long enough to go around the entire quilt plus 20 inches.  Learn how to join binding strips by clicking the link.

Use our binding calculator to figure out the number of strips to cut for creating the binding for this quilt.

Finally, I sewed the double fold binding to the front of the quilt and then hand sewed it to the back of the quilt using an invisible hem stitch.

Don't forget to label the quilt!  Want to know how to make a quilt label?  Learn how to make a customized quilt label on our  How to Make a Quilt Label with an Inkjet Printer page.

FINISHED QUILT

The quilt is finished.  Look below for photos of my finished quilt. 

Want more quilting projects and tutorials? Check out my Quilting Projects Pinterest Board for lots of fun quilting ideas and projects.

Happy Quilting!

Other Quilt Tutorials you may be interested in:

• Easy Four Patch Quilt - With a charm pack and fabric yardage, make a cute quilt.
• Baby Crib Quilt Tutorial - Looking for another beginner quilt tutorial?  Check out this wonderful baby quilt pattern.
• Beginner Quilt Tutorial - Click for another beginner quilt tutorial.
• Sailboat Quilt Block Pattern - The sailboat block is easy and fun. Create an awesome baby quilt, boy quilt or nautical themed nursery.
• String Quilt - A fun scrap busting quilt!  This string quilt is made from foundation pieced string pieced blocks.  This quilt is a great scrap buster.  Click to learn how to make this beautiful quilt.
• I Spy Quilt - An I Spy Quilt or Mat is the perfect interactive quilt for toddlers to learn to identify objects.
• Vertical Stripe Quilt Pattern