‘Tis the Season wall quilt and its mitered corners

Yesterday I showed you how to get started making a Holiday Season wall quilt using some of Northcott’s new ‘Tis the Season fabrics.

Here’s how to finish it up. The large squares need to be squared up first. When I measured mine, they were 16¼” x 16¾”. It’s common to have this type of measurement when working with printed panel fabric. Just square them up so they are 16¼” on all sides. The slight difference in measurement of the red strips will hardly be noticed when the quilt is finished.

Next, you need to make the small blocks the same size as the large ones by adding another border. My small squares with the red border were 10½” x 10⅜”, so I squared them up to be 10¼” on all sides. I like to use a square ruler for the squaring-up process. If you have a rotating cutting board, this is a good time to use it because you can do the squaring-up without constantly moving the fabric.

From red and green holly fabric, cut 4 – 3½” x 10¼” for the top and bottom borders.

Cut 4 – 3½” x  16¼” for the side borders.

For each square, sew on the top and bottom border first and then the side borders.

Now you can add another border to the small squares so they are the same size as the large ones (16¼”).

From red and green holly fabric, cut 4 – 3½” x 10¼” for the top and bottom borders.

Cut 4 – 3½” x  16¼” for the side borders.

Sew on the top and bottom borders first and then the side borders on each square.

Sew the 4 – 16¼” blocks together. You now have a 32″ square.

For the outer border, I decided to use the ‘Tis the Season wide green stripe which looks great with mitered corners. Here’s how to get started.

Cut 4 – 5″ x WOF from striped fabric.

On the wrong side of the fabric, mark the center of one of the green strips with a marking pencil. Then measure and mark 15¾” and 16″ on each side of the center mark. Do this for each border strip.

Pin the top striped border to the 32″ square. Line up the center mark on the border with the center seam of the pieced blocks. You’ll have extra fabric at both ends of the striped border.

Sew on the border, stopping and starting at the 15¾” mark at each end. You’ll be stopping and starting ¼” from the edge of the quilt top.

Continue sewing on the remaining borders in the same way.

Fold the corners of the quilt top diagonally, right sides together, lining up the border strips as shown.

Using the 45° angle line on your ruler as a guide and starting at the end of the stitching line, draw a 45° angle line at each corner of the border.

Starting at the outside edge of the border, stitch on the line to complete the mitered corner. Backstitch at the beginning and end of the seam.

Stitch each corner in the same way.

Press seams toward border.

Trim excess fabric from border strips, leaving a ¼” seam allowance.

Press the corners carefully to avoid stretching the bias edges.

Now you’re all ready to quilt your wall quilt/table topper and then sew on the binding.

I like to use a ½” finished size binding for my quilts. If you’d like to try this, cut 5 binding strips 3″ wide from the remaining red ColorWorks fabric. When trimming the quilt after the quilting is finished, make sure to leave ¼” of batting and backing all around the outside edges of the quilt. Then sew on the binding with a ½” seam. You can see more details about my binding method in this QUILTsocial post.

Be sure and come back tomorrow. I’ll be showing how to use some different Northcott ‘Tis the Season fabrics to make a small table runner.