...Kaleidoscope Quilt Tutorial!

I seem to be on a run of finishing all of those projects that I began a few months ago and failed to complete due to my craft crash that occurred a few months ago.

This quilt was the only thing that kept me going for awhile, I kinda gave up everything else but I was fascinated to see what would come of this pile of colours...

I was inspired by a kaleidoscope quilt that I saw pinned by Cluck Cluck Sew and thought I'd give it a shot myself. There was no pattern, so I set off on a search for a template. Oh my goodness!! Type in kaleidoscope quilt into a google image search and you will be wowed by the results!!

A variety of fabrics (I used 8 colours)

Sewing Machine

Scissors

Pins

Thread

Paper

Pencil

From what I could see, there wasn't much on offer template-wise, so I made my own. It's pretty straight forward if you work out exactly how big you want each square and then do some clever ruling! Each of my squares were about 10 inches long.

Once you have your template, make yourself a 'kite' shaped template cut out from the original.

Trace these onto your fabric (as pictured) and cut them out. The amount you need may vary depending on how many flags squares your quilt will be.

As my quilt is 4x4 with alternating colours on each square, I cut out 8 of each colour.

Note how I have my fabrics pinned together to save cutting and ruling all strips!  

Once you have all of your kites cut out, you will need to assemble them. This is quite time consuming, but it's also exciting to see them all come together!

Next, you need to cut out all of your white triangles. This part seemed to drag the most for me, maybe because of the lack of colour!! Make sure that you are including at least a centimetre seam allowance!

If you are doing a 4x4 square quilt, you will need you will need 64 white triangles. See, boring!!

Once again, I pinned about 4 pieces together at a time to save ruling and chopping time.

Now sew your white triangles to your assembled kite squares (I'm SO technical, right!?). It takes a bit of practice to get the angles in the centre right, so see what works best for you. Have a seam ripper nearby in case you go too far!

Here are my squares assembled...starting to make sense now?!

 Join all of your squares together to form your quilt top. this is where you can see all of your hard work pay off!

So, I was completely stumped for how I wanted to border and bind my quilt. I had so much fabric left, and loved the idea of a large combination of colours that I decided to make a pieced border out of triangles. Crazy lady!! 

So I ruled up lots of triangles, doubled my fabric and got cutting....

This was a lot more fun than the white though-like I said, it must be the colours!

Here they are all piled up in order!

This is the pattern I chose. No particular reason really, but having them sorted before you start sewing is a handy way to make the piecing and assembly a bit easier.

I'm so glad I took this picture! I love how it also depicts the mayhem and mess in my loungeroom at this time! Please note that on the other side of this table was my husbands entire office all set up on the dining room table. We were living in piles of fabric, baby food (note the high chair on the right), paperwork, builders bashing away down the hall, plasterers, plumbers.... and I'm creating even more fun here. Very funny to look back on!

So this is where I stopped. And this is how it stayed for about 5 months. The above photo was taken on the 5th April! Gee whiz!!

I have no more photos of the process, but from here I sewed on my rainbow snake border, quilted it by going around each of the crosses to make a similar pattern on the back, and then used this amazing tutorial for my binding.

I hope you like it!

~This post is linked up at these fantastic parties!~