Nine Carat Quilt Along: Finishing your Quilt

My Nine Carat Quilt from our quilt along is finished! BIG THANKS to everyone who joined the quilt along! Just a little bit about Nine Carat Quilt… It’s my best selling pattern with Cut Loose Press. You can get the digital pattern from Cut Loose Press or the paper paper pattern from QBPN.

I do have a Quilt Reveal Video posted to my youtube where I talk about some of the different techniques and such that I used if you want to check it out.

Our quilt along officially ended with assembling the quilt top, but I do have some more content to help you finish your quilt. Here’s a list of things you need to do now to finish your quilt, with some links to videos/tutorials to help you. NOTE: the steps below are based on quilting the quilt yourself. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sending your quilt off to be longarmed. BUT, I have zero experience with this myself and don’t feel qualified to write about that. So, just know that some things on this list don’t apply to that. There may also be some things you’ll need to do to prep your quilt for the longarmer so always follow any instructions your longarmer gives you.

Piece your backing (if not using a wide/seamless backing). I did an “invisible” seam for the back of my quilt. You can check out my tutorial for Matching up the Prints in Your Backing.
Baste your quilt. I flip flop between basting with glue sticks and basting with spray baste. I am currently using spray baste more and more due to an annoying hand disease. You can check out my tutorial for Basting with Glue Sticks. The tutorial also applies to spray basting. I used Warm & White batting for this one.
Quilt your quilt. I let the people in my quilt along email list vote on how I would quilt this and said I would make a tutorial for that design. The winner was paisleys. Here’s that Quilting Paisleys Tutorial if you want to check it out. I also have some other tutorials in my Quilting Your Quilts Playlist.
Trim the excess batting and backing. This one seems pretty straight forward, so I don’t have a video for it. BUT, my number one tip for this one would be to use your ruler and rotary cutter to do this instead of just scissors so that you’ll have cleaner cuts and be able to square up your quilt better.
Add your Corner Label (Optional). Note: my tutorials only apply to a corner quilt label. You can check out some of my tutorials for adding a corner quilt label in the Label Playlist.
Bind your quilt. I used a vertical seam to sew my binding pieces together. You can check out my tutorials for Cutting those Binding Pieces and Joining the Ends of the Binding with a Vertical Seam. I also have a Playlist with videos for each step of binding (using a diagonal seam).

Now that the steps are done, here’s some more pictures of my quilt. I’d love to see your quilt when you finish it. So, please post to instagram and tag me @snugglebugstitching.