April in Hive 8 - a baby quilt for Ursula & Benno - the tutorial

In September the big moment will take place and we will be a real family for the first time when our small little 'frog' will come out of my belly <3 So I decided to ask you for your help with the first quilt for the little boy/girl.

I've choosen a x and + quilt:

Picking Fabrics

Each block is made up of 7 total fabrics. This quilt is very scrappy, so it does not matter if you choose lights or darks for each area. Just make sure you have 7 total fabrics in a block. If you have it would be fabulous if you could use a small amount of “I spy” fabrics.

Because we don’t know if it will be a boy or a girl who will surprise us in September I’ve choose a neutral color palette: Just please try in your pick lemon and not mustardy yellows and stay with the fabrics in a modern and not too dark range if possible – f.e. I don’t like batiks that much.

Cutting Fabrics

Fabric 1 for the center cross - two 2" squares, one 5" x 2" strip
Fabric 2 for the edges of the cross - four 2" squares
Fabric 3 for the background triangles - eight 2" squares
Fabrics 4-7 for branches of the x - four different 3.5" squares cut on point

Creating the X branches
For each block, we create four x branches or corners.

Using a fabric marking pen and straight edge, draw a straight line for corner to corner on your 8 background fabric pieces as shown.

By aligning one 2" background square onto of one 3.5" aligning the corners with right sides facing sew directly on the line you just traced.

Trim away the outer edge, leaving 1/4" for seam allowance.

Press open and repeat for the opposite corner.

As you can see, even without the center cross, this quilt design has quite an impact.

Tip: Making each corner one by one can tedious, so I like to do all of my marking in one step and then chain piece to make the process faster.

Making the +
Making the + in the center of the x is simply a matter of laying out your fabrics and sewing the pieces together with a 1/4" seam. Please press the seams open.

Assembling the block

And last but not least: simple sew the pieces together. Please press all seams open again.

Tipp: for matching the points a bit easier: When joining the middle row to the other parts it can be helpful to mark the both middles with a pin and align them.

That's it, your first block is done!

Final block size: 7.5" finished, 8" including seam allowance

Credits

The tutorial I adapted is originally from badskirt.

Happy making and thank you!

Ursula