Most quilt tops give you somewhere to hide. A seam that lands a thread off is swallowed by the block around it, and nobody but you ever knows. This one does not work that way, and that is the whole point of it.
Aspen is a free beginner quilt pattern, 58 1/2 by 75 inches, built from six rows of thirteen units. Every row lines up with the one above it, so the seams run across the full width of the quilt without a break. That is what makes it calm to look at from the end of the bed. It is also the one thing that will show a quarter inch seam that wanders. So sew one strip set, measure it across the four strips, and fix the seam before you sew the other thirty-eight. Ten minutes at the start, and all thirty-nine come out right.
It was designed by Marbelia Fernandes, co-founder of The Fabric Hut, and it is free to print, use and teach. The PDF below has the cutting list, the diagrams, the five sizes and the finished measurements already worked out.
Pattern details
- Pattern name: Aspen
- Designer: Marbelia Fernandes, The Fabric Hut
- Finished size: 58 1/2" x 75"
- Size category: Throw, with baby, lap, twin and queen in the same PDF
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Unit: Strip and charm unit, 4 1/2" x 12 1/2" finished, standing upright in the row
- Technique: Strip piecing, chain piecing
- Precuts: 2 1/2" x 10" mini strips and 5" charm squares
- Borders: None
- Price: Free to print and use
Download the free Aspen quilt pattern PDF
Everything you need to make this quilt
Morning Mist + White Supreme Bundle 284pcs
200 Precut Fabric Strips 2.5" x 10" + 84 Squares 5"
What the Aspen quilt pattern asks of you, counted
Beginner is a word that gets used loosely, so here is what it means on this quilt, counted rather than claimed.
Sewing the whole top takes 272 seams. There are 117 inside the strip sets, 78 to add the white squares, 72 to join the units into rows, and 5 to join the six rows together. None of those is hard. A strip sewn to a strip is the first seam anybody learns.
What makes this quilt different is how many of those seams have something to meet. Inside a row, every join puts four seams against four seams, and there are twelve joins in each of the six rows. Between the rows, twelve more line up at every one of the five row seams. Add them and you get 348 places where something has to land where it should.
That number is not a warning. It is an explanation. The reason the pattern tells you to measure the first strip set is that 348 small accuracies are built on one measurement, and the measurement takes a minute. Four mini strips sewn together have to come to 8 1/2 inches across. If they come up short, the seam is too wide, and no amount of care further on will put it back.
If you have not set yours up yet, our guide to getting an accurate quarter inch seam is the thing to read before you cut anything for this one.
One cut, and it comes after the sewing
There is a single cut in this quilt and it happens once the sewing is already done.
You take four mini strips of different prints, sew them together along their long edges, and press all three seams open. That gives you a strip set 10 inches wide and 8 1/2 inches across the four strips. Make 39 of them. Then cut each one in half, 5 inches from either end and square across the strips, and you have 78 identical halves at 8 1/2 by 5 inches.
Nothing is trimmed before that cut and nothing is trimmed after it. The 156 mini strips and the 78 white squares become 234 pieces that go straight into the quilt.
Two small things make the cut behave. Press the strip set seams open, and sew each seam in the opposite direction to the one before it, or the set will bow and the cut will not be square to the strips. Use a shorter stitch length than usual too, because you are about to cut across every one of those seams and a short stitch holds where a long one works loose.
Then a white 5 inch square goes on one end of each half, right sides together, pressed toward the strips and away from the white. That is the unit. Feed them through the machine one behind the other, because 78 of anything goes faster that way. Our walkthrough of chain piecing covers the method if it is new to you.
Six rows, and the order of the turns is the design
A row is thirteen units side by side with the strips running across them. Three rows go in one way up, with the white squares at the bottom. Three are turned a half turn, so the white sits at the top. Reading down the quilt, the order is A, B, B, A, A, B.
That order is the whole design, and it is worth seeing what it produces before you sew. Where two white squares meet between rows they make a band 9 inches deep. Where two bands of prints meet they run together with nothing between them. The pattern calls out a 4 inch bar at that join, and those are the seams worth your attention.
Measure the finished top from the top edge down and the bands come out like this: 8 inches of prints, 9 of white, 8 of prints, 4 1/2 of white, 16 of prints, 4 1/2 of white, 8 of prints, 9 of white, 8 of prints. That adds to 75, and it reads the same from the bottom up. The widest band of prints sits at 37 1/2 inches, exactly halfway. Nothing in the pattern asks you to center anything. It falls out of the order of the turns.
When the rows go together, nest the seams between the units and pin at the intersections. Press the seams between units to the right in row 1 and to the left in rows 2, 4 and 6, which is what lets them nest at all.
If you want the version with nothing to match
This quilt has a sibling, and the two make a useful pair.
Alder uses the same unit, the same one cut and almost the same number of seams, 263 against 272 here. The difference is that its rows are offset, so inside a row a white square always meets a bar of prints and there is nothing at all to line up. Alder has 56 places to match. Aspen has 348.
Neither one is better. Alder is the quilt to make when you want to sew without thinking. Aspen is the one to make when you want the quilt to look like it was measured, and are willing to measure.
Five sizes of the Aspen quilt pattern, same unit
The unit does not change from size to size and neither does the one cut. Only the counts move. Baby is 9 units by 4 rows at 40 1/2 by 50 inches. Lap is 11 by 6 at 49 1/2 by 75. Throw, the one on the cover, is 13 by 6 at 58 1/2 by 75. Twin is 14 by 8 at 63 by 100. Queen is 19 by 8 at 85 1/2 by 100.
The turn order grows with the quilt: ABBA for the baby, ABBAAB for the lap and the throw, ABBAABBA for the twin and the queen. The counts for strips, squares, packs and backing for every size are in one table in the PDF, so you are not working anything out on paper. If you are weighing up which size to make, our quilt size chart is the place to settle that before you open a pack.
The fabric
The quilt on the cover is made in Morning Mist, twenty greens with white in between. The top takes 5 packs of 2 1/2 by 10 inch mini strips, which is 200 strips: 156 go into the top, 38 more become the binding, and 6 are spare. The white comes from 2 packs of 5 inch charm squares, 78 used and 6 spare. You can have all 284 pieces in one bundle rather than counting packs yourself.
Any collection works if two things hold. The prints have to live close together in color, so that a band of four of them reads as one band and not as four arguments. And the squares have to be much lighter or much darker than every print, because the squares are what draw the lines across the quilt.
There is no sorting order to find. Any four prints that are not identical make a strip set, and the binding is scrappy on purpose so that all twenty prints run right around the edge.
For the back, 108 inch wide backing at 2 3/8 yards covers the throw with no seam at all. Our guide to quilt backing goes through the alternatives if you would rather piece one.
Before you start
Do not prewash the precuts. Open all five packs of mini strips together, because the top is counted first and the binding comes out of what is left.
Before you join the rows, lay all six out on a design wall or on the floor and move the units around until the two halves of a strip set are far apart and no two matching prints touch, along a row or between two rows. Take a photograph before you sew. It is easier to see a repeat in a photograph than on the floor.
The pattern takes you to a finished top. For the last step, our step by step guide to quilt binding covers the binding, and the backing guide above covers the basting.
Aspen is one of ours, free to print, use and teach. There is more where it came from in our collection of free quilt patterns, and if you have been meaning to get your quarter inch right, this is the quilt that will tell you whether you have.
