On Safari

I bought yards of fabric for backings for a couple of quilts.  I can't get any more of  Zoe the Giraffe so I decided to use the Safari Swank on the front and use other fabrics from the stash for the backing.

This is an easy quilt that can be made up quickly.  Two fabrics that co-ordinate with one that is a really good print.  You need 1M of the focal fabric and .25M of each of the co-ordinates.  If you are worried about making a mistake with the cutting buy .3M.
When I cut the turquoise and orange I cut four strips for the binding too.   When I finish up a quilt I put it up on the flannel wall.  One quilt on top of another and sometimes another. If I fold them up, I have to press them again and that isn't my cup of tea.

You don't need a long arm to quilt this out.  You can do 2" wide stitching starting in the middle of the strips and working your way right and left.  You can cross-hatch this one too.  The quilting will actually take longer than putting this together, but you could do this quilt in a day.

This is how I did the binding so it wasn't orange on the top/bottom and blue on both sides.

Find the centre of the side you want to start on.  I start top/bottom....always.

 Find the centre of the next side you will be stitching your binding to

Mark them both with a pin.
(I always do a right angle join for my bindings.  IF I do happen to hit a corner, I won't have as much bulk when I have to turn the binding to the wrong side.  Yes, I still hand stitch my binding down.)

Find the centre of the join and pin it in place on the second side you will be stitching.
Take the starting tail of your binding, work backwards to where you will start sewing your binding down.
Leave a length and then start stitching it in place.
In the photo below, you can see the yellow headed pin where the centre of the top of the quilt is.  Where I'm starting leaves me a good long piece when it comes to the end for the final join

This quilt will not have the joins exactly in the same spot on top/bottom and the two sides.  My binding strips were about 40" and this is a 36 x 36" quilt.  It's close enough.  

The thread is King Tut #971 Linen

The pantograph is Popcorn by Jodi Beamish-**a Canuck**-for Willow Leaf Studio

Remember....you can either print this entire blog post or just the individual photographs.
If you just download the pattern, it is copyright!!
Don't forget to take the fabric requirements and write them on the back of your print out.