Making a Boho Beach picnic quilt

What better time than now to gather and use fabrics from the Banyan Batiks Boho Beach collection?

These light and airy fabrics will make a pretty and perfect picnic quilt, measuring approximately 64½” X 64½” before quilting.

Spring has sprung! Before you know it, summer vacations will begin! Whether your plans for summer include a “staycation” or far-flung travels, a gorgeous picnic quilt should definitely be part of those plans.

To really set off and highlight the Boho Beach collection fabrics, I’ll use Banyan Batiks White on White # 81200-10.

To put this quilt together, I used the following quantities of fabrics:

• (2) ¼ yd pieces of Boho Beach fabric
• (2) ½ yd pieces of Boho Beach fabric
• (2) ¾ yd pieces of Boho Beach fabric
• (1) ⅔ yd piece of Boho Beach fabric for binding
• (1) 5 yd piece of White on White as the background fabric

While considering a design for this quilt, feeling nostalgic, I started thinking about going back to basics. In this case, the basics will be half-square triangles. With that idea in mind, this week, I’ll show you 4 different ways to make half-square triangles.

The first method I’ll show you is the one that most of us learned when we began quilting. Never mind when that was! But, I digress.

To demonstrate the first method, we’ll cut our first squares from the (2) ⅓ yard pieces of Boho Beach fabric along with one-half yard of the background fabric.

When I took my first quilting class, I was told that to make perfect half-square triangles (HST), I needed 2 pieces of fabric, each cut ⅞” larger than the desired finished size of the HST block. In other words, if I wanted a 2” finished HST I had to cut my fabric pieces to measure: 2⅞” x 2⅞”.

TIP Over time, however, I’ve learned that as hard as I try, sometimes my seams are off. So, to make sure my HST are perfect every time, I begin instead by cutting (2) 3” square fabric pieces. Then, after I assemble my HST, I trim them down to a 2½” x 2½” unfinished HST.

You’ll need to cut (16) 2⅞” x 2⅞” squares (or, following the tip above, (16) 3” x 3” squares) from each ¼ yard piece of the 2 selected Boho Beach fabrics. You’ll also need to cut (32) 2⅞” x 2⅞” squares, or (72) 3” x 3” squares, of the background fabric.

After you’ve cut out all your squares, draw a diagonal line on the wrong side of the background fabric using a pencil.

Match a background fabric with an accent colored fabric right sides together. Once they are stacked sew a ¼” seam on each side of the pencil line.

After you’ve sewn all the diagonal seams on your squares, cut along the diagonal pencil line. Open the resulting half-square triangles and press the seams towards the darker fabric. Trim to 2½” x 2½”, if required.

It’ll take you a little while to complete the steps above, but when you’re done, you’ll be ready to try the next technique for making half-square triangles that I’ll share in tomorrow’s post using more Banyan Batiks Boho Beach collection fabrics!