The Easy As ABC QAL!

I’m very excited to introduce the Easy As ABC quilt along! Starting in July, I will be sharing a free pattern for each letter of the alphabet over the next six months. On the first Friday of each month I will share 5 free alphabet patterns and the tutorials to go with them! Each letter is rotary cut and machine pieced – no paper piecing, no templates, just you and your machine.

The 123s
Each letter finishes at 6″ x 8″, with the exception of Q, and the total block size including the border is 12.5″ x 14.5″. How you choose to finish your letter blocks and quilt tops is up to you, more on that later, but for this basic kind of layout it will finish at 72″ x 98″ – perfect for a big, cozy kid’s bed quilt and it will be just in time for Christmas if you’re on top of your blocks! But the brilliant thing about alphabet patterns is you can use them for such a big range of uses. I will be sharing the instructions for making the quilt top as is, but maybe some of you will decide to choose specific letters to make a name cushion, or a wall hanging, or maybe personalised pillow cases, or… Get creative!

The Fabric
Each letter and border requires about a fat quarter of fabric or a fat eighth for some if you cut carefully. You will also need about 4.5 yards of solid for the background and sashing. For the colour spectrum layout, you’ll need:

– 1 red
– 2 orange
– 3 yellow
– 4 light green
– 5 aqua (blue/greens)
– 5 light blue
– 4 navy dark blue
– 3 purple
– 2 dark pink
– 1 light pink

I’m also very excited to announce that Sew Lux Fabric has made up kits for the QAL! If you love the colour spectrum look and like me, you’re lacking a few of the right shades to make it work nicely, then you’ll want to check out the kits.

The kits are a monthly bundle of 5 fat quarters for that month’s row and you can also order the 4.5 yards of Moda Bella White Bleached bundle for the background and sashing. They’ll ship this with your first bundle and refund excess shipping charges at the time of shipment. International customers will get bimonthly shipping to help save almost $30 in shipping fees over the 6 months. You can see the first two bundles above – look at that gorgeous rainbow beauty!

The Community

At the end of each month, there will be a linky for you to share your progress. You will need to have made at least 1 new block in that month to link up, and there will be prizes too! At the end of the QAL, link up your finished products. There’ll be two categories – large quilts and smaller items. Quilts only need to have the top pieced, although mega kudos to those who sandwich and quilt! And smaller items need to be finished finished. And there will be more prizes to share around! There will be a Viewers’ Favourite Quilt Top, Most Creative Use of Blocks in the small items category as chosen by YOU, plus Participation Awards for each category.

Each month’s linky prizes are thanks to our wonderful sponsors:

Part of the fun of a QAL is the community! You can join the Flickr group to follow along everyone’s progress, to ask questions, etc and add the button to your sidebars and blog posts to help spread the word! I will be linking all the patterns to the QAL page.

July – Letters A, B, C, D, E
August – Letters F, G, H, I, J
September – Letters K, L, M, N, O
October – Letters P, Q, R, S, T
November – Letters U, V, W, X, Y
December – Letter Z plus hyphen and numbers 1, 2, 3

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments! I hope you’ll join in!