There is a moment in every large quilt where the fun stops. The top is finished, the colors are right, and then you have to push all of it through the throat of a domestic machine. Shoulders up, elbows out, half the quilt bunched against the wall behind your table.
The quilt as you go technique exists to remove that moment. You quilt each block on its own small piece of batting and backing, then join the finished blocks. You never handle more than one block at a time.
Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts walks through the whole method in the video below. Watch it, then stay for the text. The sizes and the seam allowances pass quickly on screen and they hold better in writing, and further down there is a second approach to the same block that changes what you can do with it.
What the Quilt As You Go Technique Actually Does
Quilt as you go, usually shortened to QAYG, quilts each block individually so that assembling the final quilt becomes a series of small, manageable jobs instead of one large one. You will also see it called the potholder method or the portable method.
The advantage is physical before it is anything else. A standard sewing machine has a limited harp, and a queen-size quilt sandwich does not care about that. By quilting one block at a time you keep the bulk under the needle down to something your hands and shoulders can actually steer.
If you have never tried it, our quilt as you go tutorial covers the same ground at a slower pace, and the patchwork version of the technique shows what it looks like on a scrappy project.
Choosing Your Block Size and Preparing Backing and Batting
Karen starts with the constraint that matters, which is what fits comfortably under the harp of your machine. She recommends working to either a 9.5 inch square or a 6 by 12 inch rectangle, and having a ruler in that same size so squaring up at the end is one cut rather than a calculation.
Her preparation rules are short:
- Block size. Pick something that moves easily under your machine. A 9.5 inch square or a 6 by 12 inch rectangle both work.
- Backing and batting. Cut both a half inch to one inch larger than the finished block size. That margin absorbs the shift that happens while you quilt.
- Scraps. Keep strips narrower than 2.5 inches in their own pile for these blocks, and sort batting offcuts by type so you are not comparing loft in the middle of a project.
You will get through more batting than you expect, because every block needs its own piece. The same goes for the strips themselves, which is why pre-cut strip rolls suit this technique so well. The widths are already consistent, so the only decision left is color order.
Building a Quilt As You Go Block One Strip at a Time
This is the part that surprises people the first time. Each seam does two jobs at once. It stitches the new strip to the one before it, and because the backing and batting are underneath, it quilts all the layers in the same pass.
You lay the first strip on the sandwich, place the next strip face down on top of it, sew the seam, and press the new strip open. Then you repeat. There is no separate quilting stage waiting for you at the end.
Karen shows four ways to arrange the strips: square and rectangular blocks, each with the strips running either parallel or on the diagonal. Precisely aligned strips give you a clean, graphic block. Letting them run wonky gives you something looser. Both are correct.
Color is where the technique opens up. Rainbow runs, high and low value contrast, or simply your favourite prints in an order that pleases you. Because each block is finished before the next one begins, you can change your mind at block four without unpicking anything.
Joining the Blocks Without Wrestling a Whole Quilt
Once the blocks are quilted, they are joined with fabric strips rather than plain seams. Karen uses one inch strips on every seam, which produces the effect sometimes described as stained glass: a visible line of color framing each block.
Black gives you hard contrast and makes the blocks read as separate panels. A colour drawn from the blocks themselves makes the joins recede. Neither is more advanced than the other, they just say different things.
The practical benefit is that the quilt is never finished until you decide it is. If it needs to be wider, you add a column. If it needs to be longer, you add a row. Our article on finishing with connector strips goes into the joining seam in more detail.
A Free Motion Version of Quilt As You Go
Everything above quilts your blocks with straight lines, because the seams are doing the quilting. That is efficient, and it is also the limit of it. The block gets quilted the way the strips happen to run.
Kim Jamieson-Hirst of Chatterbox Quilts found a way around that limit, and it is worth understanding even if you never use it, because the reasoning applies to more than this one block.
The problem with free motion quilting on a QAYG block
Kim wanted to free motion quilt each strip instead of relying on the seams. In principle nothing stops you. In practice, here is what the sequence looks like.
You put the first strip down and free motion quilt it, which means a free motion foot on the machine and the machine set up for free motion. Then you want to add the next strip, which needs an accurate quarter inch seam, which means a different foot, different settings, and possibly a different needle plate. Then you press the strip open and want to free motion quilt it, so you change everything back.
Multiply that by the number of strips in a block. As Kim puts it in the video, there is a lot of changing of feet and changing of machine settings going on.
Why the ruler foot solves both problems
Her solution is to put on a ruler foot and set the machine up for ruler work, then never touch either again for the whole block.
It works because of two properties of that foot. Ruler quilting is free motion quilting with a template against the foot, so the machine is already in the right mode for free motion work. And the ruler foot is round, with the needle sitting a quarter inch from the edge of the foot in every direction.
That second property is the trick. To sew the quarter inch seam, you run the edge of the round foot along the edge of the strips. The needle lands a quarter inch inside, which is exactly where the seam belongs.
Kim is clear that this is not a precision technique and does not need to be. If you veer off a little, the block still works.
Setting up the machine
Kim works through her machine's sewing application mode, into the quilting area, and selects ruler work. There are two settings there, medium and light, and the choice depends on your sandwich rather than your skill.
Medium is the default and suits an ordinary quilt sandwich. Light drops the presser foot closer to the surface, which is what you want with a very low loft batting or a flat filler.
Working the block
The order is the same as Karen's, with the quilting moved forward:
- Lay the first strip on the sandwich and free motion quilt it down, locking the stitches at the start.
- Keep the quilting design away from the edges of the strip. You will lose a quarter inch to the seam on one side, and eventually a quarter inch on the other side too, and any motif that runs to the edge will be cut in half by the seam.
- Add the next strip with the round foot riding the edge. There is no need to lock the stitches here, because the beginning of that seam is caught inside the seam allowance.
- Press the strip open. An iron works, and so does a seam roller, which has the advantage of letting you stay in your chair.
- Free motion quilt the new strip with a different design, then carry on.
Kim works out to one side until she runs out of block, then returns to the centre and works out the other way.
The side effect is the real reason to try this. Every strip is a small, low stakes panel where you can practise a motif you have never attempted, on a piece small enough that a bad one costs you nothing. If you want somewhere to start, our six beginner free motion designs are all suited to a narrow strip, and there is a longer walkthrough of free motion quilting on a real quilt if you want to see the same motions at full scale.
Sizing for shrinkage
Dense quilting draws the layers up. Kim cuts her backing and batting at about 10 inches for a block she intends to finish at 9.5 inches unfinished, which is 9 inches once it is sewn into the quilt.
That is a slightly larger margin than Karen's half inch to one inch, and the reason is the quilting. The more stitching you put into a block, the more it pulls in, so give yourself room and trim at the end rather than hoping.
Layout Variations Worth Trying
Karen ends her video with the part most people skip, which is what happens after the blocks exist.
Orientation does most of the work. With 6 by 12 blocks, turning one of them ninety degrees changes the whole surface of the quilt without changing a single fabric choice. Half square triangles set into the corners give you another layer of movement.
This is where quilt as you go stops being a workaround for a small machine and starts being a design method in its own right. If you want more block layouts to work from, our beginner quilt patterns page collects the ones that suit this kind of construction.
What to Have Ready Before You Start
Both approaches come down to the same short list. Strips, batting, backing, and something that keeps your quarter inch honest.
That last one deserves a note. Kim's ruler foot works because it fixes the quarter inch in the tool rather than in your attention, and that is the whole reason the technique is faster. If your machine has no ruler foot, the same problem has a simpler answer: our seam guide ruler bundle sets a physical stop on the bed of the machine at any seam allowance from an eighth of an inch to two inches, and it arrives with forty 2.5 by 10 inch strips, which is enough to build your first blocks without cutting anything.
You are not looking for accuracy here so much as repeatability. A quarter inch that is consistently a hair wide will give you a better block than one that wanders.
Which Version Should You Start With
Start with Karen's. The seams do the quilting, there is nothing to set up, and you will have a finished block within the hour.
Come back to Kim's when you want the quilting itself to say something, or when you have decided it is time to get better at free motion and you want somewhere forgiving to practise.
Neither one is the advanced version. They answer different questions.
Whichever you choose, the thing worth holding on to is that you are allowed to finish a quilt in pieces. Nobody hands out extra credit for wrestling the whole thing at once.
Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder
P.S. If you try the free motion version, keep the first block. Not because it will be good, but because in six months you will want the evidence of where you started.
Technique in the second half of this article demonstrated by Kim Jamieson-Hirst of Chatterbox Quilts. The quilt as you go method in the first half is demonstrated by Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts.
