Free Sampler Quilt Tutorial from Riley Blake and Amy Smart

 I finished piecing my Meet the Maker quilt – a free sampler quilt with blocks designed and shared by Riley Blake Designs. I put my own twist on it (I guess I’m kind of a rebel, lol) and have shared all of the links here to make your own quilt with this sampler quilt layout.

This quilt is made up of 5 different star block designs and 1 repeating setting block. I have links to instructions for all six quilt blocks below. I love the way the red Irish Chain blocks create a repeat design that sets off all of the other pieced blocks!

This quilt was made using fabrics from my first two fabric collections, a combination of Gingham Girls and Sunnyside Avenue. The two lines were always designed to play well together and I love the finished result!

Fabric Requirements for Finished Sampler Quilt:

This quilt finishes at 64″ x 84″

• about 2 yards of white background fabric
• 1st border (red): 1/4 yard
• 2nd border (navy): 1 yard
• Binding (green): 1/2 yard
• Backing: 5 yards

This quilt pattern is a great one for using up favorite fabrics and scraps. All of the blocks in this quilt finish at 10″ x 10″, so it would also work for using up orphan 10″ x 10″ quilt blocks too!

Unfortunately the fabric collections that I used for this quilt are out of print. You may be able to find bits and pieces via Ebay or Googling Gingham Girls and Sunnyside Avenue fabric. Another recent collection has very similar colors and would look great in this quilt. That collection is called Sugarhouse Park. You can find it here, here, and here.

Free Quilt Block Tutorials:

Below are the links to the free quilt block tutorials for each block. I made my finished quilt differently from the Riley Blake original. Here is what I made:

Make 17 patchwork blocks using any combination of these 5 tutorials. (Or incorporate any 10″ x 10″ blocks that you like.) All of these blocks are part of the Riley Blake Meet the Makers series.

Block 1 tutorial here

Block 2 Tutorial here

Block 3 Tutorial here

Block 4 Tutorial Here

Block 5 Tutorial Here

Here is my variety of pieced blocks before I assembled them. I loved playing with scrappy color combinations. If you look at them now, you can see that I only used the color red as an accent color in these blocks. That’s because I was planning to use red as my dominant color in my off-setting block. (heh heh! Aren’t I clever?)

The off-setting block in this quilt is an Irish Chain Block. You’ll need to make 18 of these blocks for this throw-size quilt.

Irish Chain Block Tutorial Here

Once all of the blocks are created, lay out the blocks 5 blocks across, 7 rows down. Start with an Irish Chain block and alternate with the star blocks.

Here is how the first two rows will appear. Sew blocks together by rows and press seams toward the Irish Chain blocks. This will help the seams nest together when you start sewing the rows together.

Borders and Finishing Quilt Instructions:

The borders I used for this quilt are as follows:

1st border: cut 6 white strips 2 1/2″ x WOF (width of fabric). I also cut 4 navy 2 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ squares to use as cornerstones for this border

2nd border: cut 7 strips (red) 2″ x WOF

3rd border: cut 7 strips (navy) 5″ x WOF

This is the method that I use for adding borders to a quilt. It’s simple and always provides perfect results. The key is the pinning – don’t skip that part! That’s what will give you nice square quilt without waves in the borders.

Here is the method I use for basting a quilt and preparing it for quilting. You can quilt it on your own machine or by hand. Or, you can do what I did – have it done by Melissa of Sew Shabby Quilting. 🙂 I like that this quilt has a bit of a retro-vibe so I had her do a traditional Baptist Fan overall design.

Here’s a peek at the back of my quilt. I did a pieced back using my red apple fabric and the red hearts from Sunnyside Ave and the woven red gingham from Riley Blake Designs.

There you go! I had fun taking this quilt to a local favorite spot for some beauty shots before all the autumn leaves are gone. Best time of the year!

Post Edit: A few people have asked if there is a printable version of this quilt. This time I’m afraid there is not. The reason this pattern is free is because all of the star blocks are provided by Riley Blake Designs. As such the videos/patterns are their intellectual property, not mine.

But their sharing is what makes this pattern free, so that is the trade off. Thanks for understanding. If you’d like to save this pattern for later use, pin the above image to help you find this post later!

As mentioned, unfortunately the fabric collections that I used for this quilt are out of print. You may be able to find bits and pieces via Ebay or Googling Gingham Girls and Sunnyside Avenue fabric. Another recent collection has very similar colors and would look great in this quilt. That collection is called Sugarhouse Park. You can find it here, here, and here.