Using Stripe Patterns in Quilts

I'm gonna talk to you today about using stripes in quilts. I know a lot of quilters are kind of afraid to use stripes. They don't quite know what to do with them, or they think they have to be real careful and fussy with them. I love stripes and I use them in a lot of different ways. And I'm gonna share some of those things with you today and hopefully have you fall in love with stripes as much as I love them.

This quilt is just a simple block quilt, but I put a stripe in the sashing to kind of jazz it up. It's a triple bar sashing, so the block is here and it has a plain, the sashing has a plain strip and a stripe and a plain strip. These set stripe strips were cut from the lengthwise grain and here's a piece of the fabric. A lengthwise grain stripes will almost always make a frame around the block and kind of give it a bit more formal look. If you wanted to cut the stripe the other direction, and I only have a small piece of it left by now, you certainly could do that.

These would be strips that you would cut along the crosswise grain and that gives you a completely different look. So always think about stripes when you're doing sashings, 'cause that might just jazz up what you're doing. Stripes are often used in borders, and here's a little quilt that benefited a lot from the striped border. This was a multicolor stripe. So you get a lot of bang for your buck.

A lot of letting your fabric do the work for you. It would have been a lot of sewing to sew little tiny strips together to get so many colors, but it made a real nice stripe, framed stripe for this particular quilt. Because I cut these lengthwise grain, once again, it makes a nice frame around the quilt, and I did mitered borders so that they matched really well. Kind of a funky quilt can use stripes that go in the other direction. These are crosswise grain stripes and they're kind of wiggly and fun stripes.

There's no way they're ever going to match up on a mitered border, but that goes perfectly with this fun jazzy little theme for this quilt. So think about both directions that your stripe goes before you make your final decision and cut them for a border. If you wanted stripes that go out and have a mitered border, that's absolutely possible. And if you use skinny stripes, you're gonna have a real easy time getting them to match up along the border. Because this is sewn, this miter is sewn along a bias edge, you can sort of fudge those stripes to make them match as you pin them.

I was not the least bit careful about sewing this on and making sure that the stripes would miter along there. I just forced 'em into it and gave 'em some pretty aggressive pressing when I pressed that seam open and it worked out really, really well. An inner border is a perfect place for a stripe, and that's what I did here. This particular stripe was a small piece of fabric that I had left and I couldn't have made these, this little inner border any wider than this. I cut as much as I could to get this.

And this corner is a butted corner. It's not mitered, and for this quilt that works just fine. It's kind of a fun, lively little quilt, so the butted border on, even on this stripe, is not a problem at all. Another thing you can do with stripes that'll save you a lot of time is to use them in place of strip piecing. This little quilt has a fun strip piece border like this.

And if I had found a stripe that I liked earlier, I could have just done that and stitched that on instead of sewing all of those little pieces of fabric together. And if I had done that, if I had decided I was going to use this fabric for the border instead of strip piecing all these little pieces, I would probably have chosen some more fabrics in these colors to put to the inside part of the quilt just to tie it all together. But that's a nice way to save time. And here's another example of the same thing. This little quilt just has a portion of strip piecing along the border.

If I had had a stripe that worked, and this doesn't match exactly, but I think you get the idea. I certainly could have cut this stripe and used it in that portion and saved a lot of time. So I have lots and lots of stripes in my stash. And every time I'm looking for something, some way to jazz up a quilt, I'll pull out a stripe to do that. I also use stripes in a lot of my piecing, and I think this stripe that I used in this block really pulled the whole color scheme together.

I think it makes the quilt much more interesting and cohesive than if I had not used that particular stripe. And once again, there are four blocks in the quilt that have this stripe. I used every inch of that stripe. I had just a tiny piece. I knew how many strips I needed to cut from it to go around the four blocks.

So I cut that and I planned the rest of the block around what I had of that particular stripe. I think lots of us use stripes for bindings and it's just a real nice way to have a lively edge to your quilt. And I just wanted you to notice that the binding join right here, I did not worry at all about the stripes matching. I just let them fall as they may, because your binding is only about a quarter of an inch, or maybe a half an inch wide. There's not gonna be a problem if you don't match that stripe.

Of course, the higher contrast you have, the more likely you might want to think about matching a stripe on a binding, but it's probably not something anybody's really gonna notice the hard effort you go to, so I wouldn't do it. I also have a lot of plaids in my stash, and almost every plaid can be a stripe. If you look at this, if I just cut the plaid like that, I've got a stripe. And this portion of it right here is even more of a stripe. So yes, it's narrow, but there are times that a narrow stripe will be perfect for whatever you're making.

Here's another plaid that has lots of choices to cut into stripes. I could cut along both edges of the dark and have a dark stripe. I could cut along both edges of the light and have a light stripe. And I have choices going this way too. I have a real busy stripe there, a red one there, or a green one there.

So when you're thinking about stripes also consider plaids. Run to the plaid section of your store and see if there's something in there that'll work for you too. One of the things that people worry about with stripes is how to join the ends. Lots of times they're gonna be using a stripe that is cut along the crosswise grain. So you only have 40 inches and maybe you have a border that's longer that you want to sew together to have a longer border.

So people can get kind of worried about how they're going to join those stripes. And I'm gonna show you three different ways to do it. I've cut two short pieces of a stripe. If you want to join with a straight seam, that's a pretty easy thing to do. I'm just going to fold one of these exactly along the stripe.

See if I can finger press it to get a pretty good crease. Oops. Now I'm just gonna scoot it along the stripe till I find a place where it matches. It matches right there. So if I can sew this edge right to there, that'll work.

I'm gonna lay it right on top. So I've got this red stripe on the top stripe strip, right on top of the bottom one. And if I align it like that, I can open it up and pin it and stitch right along the crease, or if the crease is along a stripe, then you have a better cue to so long. That's how you would get a longer strip that looks like it's perfect. A lot of us like to use a diagonal seam instead of a straight seam, and you can do that too.

Once again, I'm going to fold one of these strips. This is along the diagonal seam. If I were really doing this for a quilt, I would press it very gently so I don't stretch it. But just to show you here, I just want you to get the idea. And I do the same thing.

I'm just going to find where it matches along the bottom strip, place it on there, and you can see that it matches just right. And once again, I would just carefully open it up, pin it, and stitch along my fold. And that way you're gonna have a stripe that works, that works exactly right. It's a perfect match. Sometimes you don't really care about all that and you're just gonna sew your strips together.

You could sew 'em just like that, but a fun way to do it and add some lively interest to your quilt is to just take another square of the stripe and turn it in the opposite direction. This would be kind of a fun thing to see in the middle of a border that's for kind of a jazzy quilt. Or let's see what happens if you do a couple of 'em. Here's another one that way. And another one that way and see that those, those stripes don't match each other.

They were cut from one strip and that would be kind of another fun way to join stripes into longer strips for your quilt. I use a lot of stripes in my blocks too. And I brought just a few little nine patches to show you that the stripes in these can go either direction, either coming out, which gives kind of a lively, active, energetic look, or if they go around, you get once again kind of a framed look. I think these in the middle of some nine patches that have no stripes, these would kind of pop and look a little bit more exciting. I also have for you to see this wonderful quote made out of stripes.

This has each block is made with stripes, one stripe cut and oriented this way. And it was quilted by Shelly Nealon who did really interesting circles all over it and brought the stripe theme out into the border, which really adds to it a lot. This block is 11 inches finished. So each of the squares is five inches, five and a half inches finished. So it's cut six inches.

I want to show you how we're gonna cut and make one of these blocks. So here's my striped fabric, and I have my template all made. It's a six inch square and I have a diagonal line drawn on it with a dark enough line to be able to actually see it well. And I'm going to put it on my fabric and align the line on a stripe. I'm gonna trace around it and do four of them.

But before I trace and cut, I better make sure I can get four identical ones first. So I'm looking at the line between the pink and the yellow and I'm gonna mark it with a pen so I get them all right. I can see that I can get two of these across the width. So that's good for two of them. Now I need to find the same stripe farther up.

This cutting is gonna go up to there. So I need to find a stripe like this far enough up to be able to get four of 'em. And I see it right there. That's aligned between the yellow and the pink. And just to be sure, I'm looking at this, the order of the colors goes pink, blue, purple, green, white, pink, blue, purple, green, white.

Good, I'm good to go. So I'm just going to align this template again and trace around the edges. I'm drawing on the right side of the fabric. Not everybody does that, but it's legal to if you want to. Sometimes it's easier to see what you're doing from the right side.

So I just draw around this template. And I'm going to draw a total of four of those and cut them all out. So here are the four squares that are already cut and they're still oriented as they were in the fabric. You're going to turn them so that they come in together as a bullseye, as a bullseye. And you can put them together either this way or you can flip them all around to the other bulls-eye.

It didn't make a whole lot of difference in this particular stripe. And now to sew them together you're going to just sew the pairs. I do kind of a different pinning thing. I'm putting this right sides together and I'm going to pin parallel to the stripes. And I always find it easiest to put a pin right between two stripes that have pretty good contrast.

And I might be doing more pins than usual, just because this is a bias edge and it will tend to be a little bit wiggly. I'm gonna put one more in. And then, that's not quite parallel to the stripe. I'm going to flip it over. I want to make sure that on this other square I've pierced the same stripes.

So I'm between that stripe, between that, this one's off a little bit. I might want to readjust that. And definitely want to readjust that one because I didn't pierce right between the red and the white stripe. And I'll do that again here, right sides together. And these are going up.

That's why it's always nice to lay out the block pieces before you start pinning, because if you pin and sew the pairs together wrong, you won't get a block that looks right at all. So once again, pinning between stripes. I'm gonna flip it over, make sure I pierced the same stripes on the other side, and I did. So I'm ready to get those sewn now. So the squares are pinned and ready to sew.

I'm just going to sew the quarter of an inch seam allowance right along that edge. This is a bias edge, so you want to be sure that you're not pulling it and stretching it. Remove my pins as I get to them. The second square I'll just run in right behind the first one, do a little chain piecing. This is where you'll see the pinning was helpful.

And it's a little awkward to have your pins going in an angle instead of straight like we're used to, but it's really, really helpful for this particular block. So I'm gonna clip them apart, get rid of the thread. And just open 'em up and see what I've got. Looks great. If I were actually making this, I would go press it.

But I'm just going to finger press it real gently. And remember everything is a bias edge, so you want to be careful with that. And I want these seams to go in opposite directions. This one's going that way. This one's going that way.

And I'm really just gonna finger press the part where they're gonna join. So flip them right sides together. And my seams are going in opposite directions. So I want a pin right there. And then I'm also going to pin the same way I did before with my pins parallel to the stripes.

And it's definitely easiest to pin between the high contrast ones. I flipped that over and I saw I really missed that bottom stripe. So it's worth the effort to align them. Because they're bias edges, they're really easy to manipulate to force them to match even when they kind of don't want to. Just a couple more pins and check the other side.

Well, missed that one too. You definitely don't want to short yourself on the time it takes to do this, 'cause it's, as a bulls-eye block with stripes all coming in toward the center, If they don't align at the seam, it's gonna really show. And I'm checking each of those as I pin it. I think one more pin should do here. And I'm going to sew this last seam.

I don't want to sew over the pins, and because they're at an angle, it would really be awkward if you tried to sew over 'em. This angle's working a little better. So here's my block. Here, see how well I did at matching things up. I see one's off by a little bit, and I might go back and fix that.

This last seam you probably want to press open, so you'll get a flatter look here in the center. Anyway, that's how you do that block, a very simple stripey block. It made such a pretty quilt. And I'm hoping that next time you're at the fabric shop, you're gonna check out some stripes and buy some to add to your stash so it will be there when you're ready to do something jazzy with another quilt, with the next quilt that you make.