Wednesday, July 27, 2022

The Selvage Quilt

Stop throwing away those selvage ends! Cut your selvage strips about 1-1/2" and use them to make a quilt. Before cutting, make sure you have enough fabric for your current project. Sometimes a half inch can make a difference if you're short on fabric.


Instead of showing circles of the colors used in the fabric, many selvages these days include little shapes showing the colors. This adds interest to the selvage ares. Cutting 1-1/2" gives you not only the selvage part, but also a little band of color to make a more interesting quilt.

To make a quilt finishing 60" x 80" you will need about 3-1/2 yards of the background fabric and a good selection of selvages in various lengths. This background fabric is Moda Grunge Basics Picnic (30150-175).

Watch the video.... 


To Make the Blocks

Cut 12 strips @ 10-1/2" x WOF. Sub cut into 80 @ 10-1/2" squares.

On the right side of the fabric, draw a diagonal line on each block.


I use Sewline Mechanical Fabric Pencil in white for dark fabrics and black for light fabrics.


Place a selvage piece along the drawn line and trim off the excess.



Stitch the selvage along the drawn line. This selvage has a little fringe on the edge. You will want to stitch just inside that fringe so you're sewing on the woven part of the selvage.

No need to press here! Now place the next selvage near the raw edge of the first selvage. Trim and stitch as you did the first selvage. Keep doing that until you reach the corner of the block.


When the piecing is finished, stitch close to the edge of the two sides with selvages. I don't know if this is necessary but I just did it to keep the edges together while piecing the blocks together.


Finish the block by pressing on both the front and the back.

This block now had a light and a dark side like a half square triangle or like a log cabin block. To set the quilt, use any of the layouts you would use for a log cabin setting or make your own design. Here is the lauout I used. 




Click on the link below to see many different settings. These settings are all 6 blocks across and 8 blocks down. LOG CABIN SETTINGS.

Happy quilting!
Carol