Quilt as you go answers the problem of a quilt too big to fit under the arm of a domestic machine. You quilt each block on its own, then join them at the end, so the whole quilt never has to pass under the machine at once.
The joining is where people get stuck, because it is not a plain seam. Each block has already been quilted right out to its own edge. Where two of them meet, the batting stops on both sides and nothing crosses the gap. Leave that gap unfilled and the join reads as a dip that runs the whole length of the quilt, one your hand finds before your eye does.
Wanda, from Alanda Craft, has a short video that closes it in a single pass through the machine. She uses two strips of different widths, one for each face of the quilt, and both go in on the same line of stitching.
She keeps it to the essentials: three blocks, two sashing strips and one seam, done at the machine in real time. Watch the order she works in rather than just the stitching. One of the steps has to happen before the seam goes in, and cannot be put right afterwards.
What we like about it is that she starts on the side nobody starts on. Almost everyone approaches a join as a question about the front, because the front is the side being looked at, and it is also the forgiving one. The back is where the real gap is, and that is where her answer starts. Once you have run your hand along a filled join and then along a hollow one, you will not willingly make the hollow kind again.
This is the finishing stage of a method that starts much earlier. If you want the whole path written out, from choosing a kit or a precut through to binding the finished edge, we wrote it: how to make a quilt, a complete step by step guide for beginners.
Credit where it belongs: the tutorial is by Wanda, on the Alanda Craft YouTube channel.
