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Learn to make this ‘Playtime’ Quilt with a Free Tutorial

I’m excited to share this free ‘Playtime’ Beginner Quilt Pattern + Tutorial. The ‘Playtime’ quilt is a beautiful and simple modern quilt that you’ll love.

A free beginner's quilt pattern and tutorial, Playtime Quilt

Needed Fabric to make Playtime Quilt

The overall finished quilt size is 37″ x 53″. Here are the fabrics you’ll need to make your own beginner Quilt:

(1) Jelly Roll, or (30) 2 ½” x 42″ strips of fabric. I used a jelly roll because it is already cut and ready to go. Talk about convenient!
(29) 1 ¾” x 42″ strips of fabric in various colors. These will make the colorful strips you see in the quilt.
Backing – (1) 60″ x 42″ piece of fabric for the backing.
Batting – at least 60″ x 42″ batting. I used Dream Puff Batting, because I like how puffy and soft it makes the finished quilt. But you can use whatever kind you prefer.
Binding – (5) 2 ½” x 42″ strips of fabric for binding.

How to Make Your Free Beginner Quilt

This free beginner quilt pattern is SUPER fun and easy to put together. If there’s one area you can save time, it’s in making your colorful strips of fabric. You can find some pre-made strips and save a LOT of time HERE.

Making Colorful Strips

Take (1) 1 ¾” x 42″ strip. Lay it out on a flat surface and starting at one end, fold in half. As you fold in half, place your iron on your strip to set your crease.

If you want a shortcut, you can buy pre-made binding. NOTE: MOST quilt binding is made from 2 ½” strips. If you buy pre-made binding, make sure the strips are cut at 1 ¾” wide.
You can find a bundle of strips pre-made just for this quilt from Bessie Pearl Textiles. This is where I got the binding strips to make my quilt, and I LOVED that they were already made. It saved a TON of time!

The fabrics Bessie Pearl is using for pre-made strips to make your ‘Playtime’ Quilt

Sewing Strips Together

Now that you have your binding strips, you are ready to sew your fabrics together.

Take (1) jelly roll piece, or 2 ½” x 42″ strip of fabric. Lay it out on a flat surface. Iron it to make sure its totally flat.
Place one of your binding strips, raw edge to raw edge, along that top of your jelly roll strip.

Making your Playtime Quilt, free tutorial

Place a second jelly roll strip on top, to make a sandwich. Be sure that all raw edges line up. I place pins as layer the top jelly roll strip. Note in the photo below how I place my pins. This placement makes it easy to take the pins out as I sew.

Double check both front and back of your pieced sandwich. Make sure all the edges are evenly lined and pinned together.
Sew your fabric strips together, pulling out pins as you go.
Keep adding one binding strip at a time following the steps above.
You can press seams as you go, or wait until the end and press them all at once.

Your quilt will look like this from the back as you add rows and press your seams: (You can see where I sprayed water in this photo if you look closely. I found that spraying water helped the seams lay flat).

Quilting Your Playtime Quilt

Ideas for quilting:

Hand quilt a straight line on each of the jelly rolls, either with one color of thread or changing up the colors of thread.
Quilt right along the seam of the color strips of fabric and the jelly roll to hide the quilting. (What I did).
Do a fun wave or design on the jelly roll with a machine.

I’ll share with you how I quilted my quilt top, but there are so many fun ways you could quilt this.

How I Quilted my Playtime Quilt

I wanted all the seams on one side of my quilt to go one direction, and the seams on the opposite side of my quilt to go the other direction. I love that this quilt is a 3D quilt, and I wanted to strips of fabric to really pop.

I also wanted the place where the seams change direction to be in a certain place, to give the affect of a ripple or wave.

To make sure that the seam direction stayed in the place where I wanted it, I placed a pin on each strip of binding / color fabric where the seam changed direction.

I sewed along the seam in a straight line.

When the seam changed direction, I stopped sewing, then started sewing on the other side of the color strip / binding piece.

Finishing Your Quilt

When the quilting was done, it was easy to trim the backing and batting and add binding as normal. I wondered how thick the quilt would be with so many layers of fabric. I wondered if sewing the binding on might be difficult, but my needle had NO problem going through the layers of fabric and adding my binding as normal.

The End Product

Here is a look at the quilt all finished. I will admit that the cool affect of the wave was lost a little after washing the quilt. But the colorful fabric binding pieces looked beautiful and like ruffly ribbon after washing and drying the quilt. I am a MAJOR fan of this quilt design, and fully plan to make a larger size for myself.

Here is the Quilt Top after washing and drying it. You can see how the fabric becomes more ribbon / lace-like.

Inspiration for the ‘After The Rain’ Quilt

Inspiration for ‘After The Rain’ quilt come from seeing so many uniquely colored, modern rainbows. I found modern rainbows everywhere, it felt like. I even made a folder in Instagram to save inspiration. Here are a couple of photos that I saved and what I liked about them.

Inspiration for After The Rain Quilt

This was the first modern rainbow that I remember seeing and thinking, “I want to make a quilt with this shape.” I love the unusual rainbow shape where the ‘legs’ of the rainbow are longer than the arch. You can see that in my ‘After The Rain’ Quilt.

These colors . . . I wanted to add these unusual rainbow colors in my quilt.

The colors in this are untraditional, but I also wanted to recreate the FEEL of this. The childlike feel and look was something I wanted to recreate in a quilt.

Speaking of wanting to recreate a feel, I LOVE the water color rainbow here. Again, this soft and welcoming vibe was one I wanted to bring to life in my quilt pattern.

Designing The Rainbow Quilt Block

I worked in the EQ8 (Electric Quilt 8) computer program to create the pattern. But designing the templates was another story. I tweaked the templates from EQ8 in Adobe Illustrator, and after HOURS and HOURS of almost giving up on this pattern, I reached out to a friend of mine who is amazing, and she helped me get the templates just right. It takes a village!

I knew I wanted the design to be an untraditional look for a rainbow, and after a lot of work (and possibly tears), I finalized this design for the quilt block:

Picking Fabrics for ‘After The Rain’ Quilt Top

My first Mini version made for the Quilters Candy Membership. It was called ‘Over The Rainbow Quilt’ at that time, before I picked a different name. I also went with blue and pink colors for this mini version.

Fabrics: Art Gallery Fabrics (AGF) Pure Solids, from outer to inner: Snow (background), Denim Blue, Icy Mint, Peach Sherbet, and Sweet Macadamia.

For my larger, lap size quilt, I wanted to try some of the more earth-tone colors with some purples. I was motivated by the Instagram photos I saved. Here is what my final, lap size quilt looks like, along with a list of the colors I used.

Fabrics Used for ‘After The Rain’ Quilt:

Rainbow 1
- AGF Honey
- Kona Snow
- AGF Mauvelous
- Kona Latte
Rainbow 2
- AGF Macchiato
- AGF Lavendar Water
- AGF Vanilla Custard
- AGF Foxglove
Rainbow 3
- AGF SAndstone
- Kona Ice Peach
- Kona Rose
- AGF Gentle Feather
Rainbow 4
- AGF Vanilla Custard
- AGF Creme De La Creme
- Kona Honey
- AGF Cinnamon
Rainbow 5
- AGF Sweet Macademia
- AGF Toasty Walnut
- AGF Peach Sherbet
- Kona Sienna
Rainbow 6
- AGF Creme De La Creme
- Kona Peach
- AGF Sweet Macademia
- AGF Mink
Binding
- from The Small Circle’s pre-made binding.
Background Fabric
- Art Gallery Fabrics ‘Snow’

THE NAME CHANGE

I first made this quilt for my digital quilting membership, the Quilters Candy Membership. It was a mini quilt pattern, just one block. And I named it, “Over The Rainbow”. Somewhere in between the release of that mini pattern and the release of the full sized version, I realized I want my patterns to have intentional names. I want each pattern to mean something, to share a message. I took time to think on this pattern.

The release of this pattern came during the Corona Virus quarantine. There was the death of George Floyd. The world felt (and at the time I write this) still DOES feel uncertain. No matter how difficult things are, there is always hope in what is to come. Things get better. It takes rain to produce a rainbow. Without difficulties, we can’t grow and improve, or appreciate the good as much as we could.

And so I decided to rename this quilt. It is now named, ‘AFTER THE RAIN’. I love this new name as much as I love the pattern. You can get a copy of the pattern HERE.

OTHER’S VERSIONS

Since this pattern came out in the Quilters Candy Membership first, I have a few samples of this pattern made in the mini version. Here are a few of the beautiful mini ‘After The Rain’ quilts that were made.

Made by Melissa of @ifyoudontsew

Made by Rachel of @wren.collective

Made by Kelli of @simplymackbeth

Made by Brittany of @loandbeholdstitchery

A personal favorite made by @wildrose_company

I hope you enjoyed seeing different versions of this pattern, ‘After The Rain’, and learning what inspired it’s creation. Be sure to check out my other blog post where I share how to attach Bias Binding to your Quilt.

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Tag: modern quilt

Free Beginner Quilt Pattern, ‘Playtime’