Chain Piecing a Quilt

My favorite way to put a quilt together is chain piecing the whole quilt.  We all chain piece, "pieces parts" of blocks, but most people don't think to chain piece the blocks together.

There are several advantages to doing this:  

• It's fast
• You can see mistakes before the rows go together
• Makes pressing the rows in the right direction easier

Lay out your blocks either on your design wall or on your floor.  (Diagram 1)  I like to put a safety pin in the top left corner of the block in Row 1, Column 1 to indicate the top left of the quilt.

Diagram 1

Diagram 2

Now take the blocks in Column two and flip them over on top of the blocks in Column 1 (Diagram 2).  I like to stack them up starting with the bottom row and off setting the pairs slightly to take them to my sewing machine.  Stitch them together one set after another; in other words "chain" piece them until the row is complete. 

Go back to your design wall (or floor) and stack up Column 3 blocks starting at the bottom with the first block ending up on top of the stack.

Bring the stack over to the sewing machine.  "Open" up the first pair that was sewn together and lay your first block from the stack (Column3) face down and sew it.  Continue opening up the first pair of sewn blocks and adding the next block from stack (Column 3) to them.

Repeat stacking up your columns and sewing them onto the blocks already assembled.

When you are finished, lay out your blocks and check to see if they all were added in the right order.  It's also easier to see if you'd like to change up a block or two.  Having the rows together sometime gives you a better perspective of how things will look.  Diagram 3 shows a quilt that is chained together.  The rows are not joined yet.  

Now it's time to take it to the ironing board and press the seams.  Press the first row one direction and the next the opposite direction.  It's easy to remember which way to press each row, because they are all there in front of you!

Diagram 3

Diagram 4

Hope you all will try out this technique the next time you're assembling a quilt.  Let me know what you think.

Added note:  When joining the rows together,  I like to start at the bottom of the quilt.  Fold the last row on top of the second to last row.  This keeps the majority of the quilt on the bottom and to the left of your machine.  Once the you've sewn these bottom to rows together, it's easy to go back to the top and fold them over on top of the rest of the rows to sew the next rows together.