Stitch-Flip Zig-Zag

Back in 2010 one of my dearest friends from college, Mo, married another great friend from college, Ian.  We celbrated with Irish car bombs, and life has been good ever since. Recently these wonderful friends of mine informed me that they were having a baby!  So congrats to them!  And to help them welcome Baby-Brink into the world I decided to put a little baby quilt together for them.  Mo has always been a lover of sunshine and most things yellow, and being too impatient to wait to find out the gender of Baby-Brink I decided on this lovely collection of bright yellows and grays.

1/4 yard cuts of 7 yellows and 7 grays

I wanted to make a fun zig-zag quilt alternating between the yellows and grays, but since I can’t bring myself to make the same quilt twice (and I have already made and given away a zig-zag baby quilt) I decided to get a little creative.  I took an idea from Jacquie Gearings playbook, stitch and flip triangles.  So here is Stitch-Flip Zig-Zag!

Cutting Instructions:

Cut each yellow fabric into two (2) 3.5-inch wide X width of the fabric strips.  Sub-cut each strip into eleven (11) 6.5-inch X 3.5-inch bricks, and one (1) 7-inch X 3.5-inch brick.

Cut each gray fabric into 3.5-inch squares.

Layout:

I like to make myself a drawing to follow while I am piecing, after all I am an engineer.  For this pattern I alternated two rows, with the first row having six (6) 6.5-inch wide yellow bricks, and the second row having one (1) 3.5-inch square, five (5) 6.5-inch bricks, and one (1) 3.5-inch square.  The stager creates the fun zig-zag pattern.  This pattern is also great for beginner sewers because there are no seams to match.  No need to worry if you are a little off in your cutting or seam allowance.  🙂

I also like to lay my fabrics out in the order that the zig zags will be when finished so I don’t get them mixed up while I am working.

Quilt top assebmly:

With the right sides of the fabric facing each other sew one gray square to each short end of the yellow bricks at a random angle.

Use your ruler to trim the seam allowance to 1/4-inch.

Flip the gray triangle open.

Press the seam allowance open, and (using your ruler) trim the extra gray so your bricks are again 6.5-inchesX3.5-inches or 7-inchesX3.5-inches.  Finally cut each 7-inch block in half to make two (2) 3.5-inch squares.

Once you have all of your bricks made sew them into rows, and lastly sew each row together.  Your Finished quilt top should be about 36-inches wide by 42-inches long.  I think this is a great size for a baby quilt because it fits perfectly on 1.5-yards of quilting weight cotton backing fabric.  For the back of this quilt I picked a nerdy labratory print in honor of our education at Michigan Tech University.  We are all nerds at heart.

I think the quilting will be a simple free-motion all over circle pattern.  It reminds be of bubbles from chemistry beakers.

After I started this quilt I found out that Baby-Brink is going to be a Girl, so I found a sweet pink print to use as a binding.

Hopefully it will be a warm and cuddly welcom to Baby-Girl-Brink from Auntie Meggers!