Most quilt as you go tutorials have you build the whole sandwich before you start, batting and backing both. Kim Jamieson-Hirst leaves the backing out until the end, and she gives a good reason for it.
Her block is improvisational. A 9 1/2 inch square of batting for a base, a first scrap laid down anywhere on it, then more scraps added around it in a circle, each one stitched with a quarter inch seam and rolled flat. Precision is not the point. She says as much more than once, and she means it: the less exact it looks, the better it reads at the end.
She quilts each piece as she adds it, using the utility stitches that came with the machine rather than anything decorative. A zigzag widened to 6.5 and lengthened to 2.5. Blind hem. Whatever is on the dial, because everyone has those even without a machine that cost a fortune. And she runs them parallel to the seam, never across it, and there is a reason for it. Stitched that way you start and stop past the edge of the fabric and the next piece covers both ends. Run them the other way and every line has to begin exactly at the seam, which it never quite does.
Since 2019 the video has been watched 141,000 times.
Now the backing. As the pieces go on, the quilting lines cross each other into a grid that looks like a mess from behind. Stitched on batting alone, nobody ever sees it, because the backing goes on afterward and hides the lot. She calls it a vanity thing, which it is, and it is also the difference between a back you are pleased with and one you are not.
She owns a mistake on camera too. She trimmed an angle before opening and pressing the piece, ended up with an awkward edge, and had to make the next scrap work harder to cover it. Open it, press it, then cut.
If you want the method written out, including how to join the finished blocks, we wrote it here: quilt as you go, the complete guide for beginners.
Kim's channel is Chatterbox Quilts.
