Quarter Millennial Quilt Week 1

We made it to January 1st and I’m so excited to get started with you on the Quarter Millennial Quilt. There are more than 800 quilters participating and honestly I can’t wait to see what y’all make!

If we haven’t met yet, I’m Teresa and I love sewing, quilting, traveling and teaching. All of it is coming together this year in this block-of-the-week sew along.

While there are 50 of blocks to make, each of them are fairly small and only one of each comes together to create a 50″ x 50″ wall hanging (or add some sashing and make it bed size!). Each week you’ll receive the patterns for 2-3 blocks, as well as videos to help you as needed.

How to get the patterns

After you’ve signed up for the sew along, you will be sent an email every Thursday morning with an “update” to your order in the CrinkleDreams.com digital library. There will be the weekly patterns and videos available in the library. Please download the patterns each week, even if you aren’t going to be able to sew them that week. The patterns will be available for seven days, after that you’ll have to buy them.

There have been lots of questions, so I’m hoping to tackle some of those here, but please leave a comment/question/suggestion and let me know what I can do to make it all lots of fun and productive for us all.

Fabrics

The choice of fabric is up to you, though I do recommend using reds, whites and blues to keep it in the patriotic color combo. This is a great time to use up quilting cotton scraps, pick up a few new fat quarters and dig into some of your older, unused fabric stash for treasures.

Each block uses at least two fabrics, though some call for up to five different fabrics. Most blocks will use fat eighths or less of each. Since blocks range from 2½” square to 16½” square, the fabric usage changes dramatically for each block. 

Notions

You’ll need your typical quiltmaking supplies, as well as some specialty items–if you want! You are not required to buy any new products, but I’ll include links to purchase, so it’s easy for you to find, if you want. Brand recommendations are my own preferences.

You should have:

• Accurate rulers w/ grip (SewTites, Creative Grids) 
• Rotary cutter with fresh blade (OLFA, KAI)
• Fabric-safe marker (Mark-B-Gone, ChacoLiner)
• Sharp pins (Clover glass head, Magic Pins) 
• Quality thread (Superior, YLI, Wonderfil, Aurifil)
• Fresh sewing needles 70/10, 80/12 (SCHMETZ)
• Iron & water spray bottle (OLFA mini iron) 
• Starch/Starch Alternative (Magic Quilting Spray)

It will be handy, if you also have:

• Stiletto & Pressing Tool (ByAnnie)
• Seam Roller (Violet Craft)
• Fabric Clips (Clover) 
• Foundation Paper (Carol Doaks) 
• Stripology ruler (GE Designs) 
• Hera marker (Clover) 
• Alphabet Clips (Seams Sew Me)
• Clapper (Modern American Vintage or Uke Village Woodworks)
• Storage for blocks (Piecekeeper-ByAnnie) 
• Curvelets rulers (Jen Carlton-Bailly)

There may be a few more things that come up along the way that I’ll share with you as recommended tools/notions to make your Quarter Millennial Quilt easier and/or more accurate. 

Join the conversation

I’ve created a Quarter Millennial Quilt space in my Dream Team community for anyone who’d like to share their finished blocks, ask questions about the process, and be inspired by others. You can join that space for free, but if you’d like to maintain access to the patterns, sew with me monthly or just have a community of quilters, you can join with a monthly paid subscription to the Dream Team community

I’m so excited to work with you all on this quilt and hope that you can make it all the way through. For those who do, we’ll have a variety of prizes that we’ll draw from, so look for more information about that later.

Happy sewing!