Cathedral Window Quilt Tutorial

I hope the instructions make sense, and that you enjoy making this blanket as much as I did. My advice...start small. Try a doll quilt or baby quilt before you get yourself in too deep. I would also say that as you increase the size of the quilt, increase the size of your squares.

This quilt requires quite a bit of background fabric, however, what you spend on extra fabric, you will save on batting since none is needed.

First cut your background fabric into squares. The finished square will be just under half the size that you cut your fabric. I cut my fabric into 10 inch squares – which gave me a 4 ½ inch finished square.

With right sides together, fold the square in half and sew ¼ inch seem along each end.

Iron each seam allowance open.

Matching the center seams, pin the fabric RS together. Sew together leaving a small opening for turning. In the picture below, I would sew from the corner to the first pin, skip the space between that pin and the next, then finish sewing to the end of the fabric.

Turn the square through the opening, making sure the get all of the corners pointed, then iron flat. You don’t need to worry about the opening that you just used to turn your fabric. It will be covered up in the next step.

Now you are ready for a little origami. Fold and press each corner to the center of the square. The opening that you left for turning will be face up and the folds should cover it.

Use your machine to tack down the corners. When doing this, you should pay more attention to the center corners than the out side corner. They will be the ones that show. You don’t want a lot of stitching here, just run 3-4 stitches across two of the corners, then the other two. The stitching will look like a little plus sign.

This is the finished block. Once you have all of your blocks done, place them next to each other (not overlapping) and run a zigzag stitch along the center to connect them. Continue until you have all of the blocks together.

The fun part – measure the square between the blocks. Cut your center pieces about ¼ inch smaller than the measurement. My squares were about 3 ¼ inches, so I cut my featured fabric at 3 inches. Place the fabric over the square. Fold down and pin one side. It will naturally fold into a curve. Sew along that curve with a blanket stitch, a small zigzag or just a straight stitch close to the edge. Repeat for each edge, folding down then sewing one edge at a time.

It is important to wait to sew the featured fabric down after all of the blocks have been put together. In the sample I only sewed two together to better illustrate where to place the fabric. On the edges of the blanket, you will fold down and sew the edges of the blank squares. When you turn over your blanket, you will notice that it is already quilted.