Tabletopper and Tutorial

I guess I am back posting sooner than expected. How was your Christmas? It's always good to be home for Christmas. We had an unexpected guest drop by and we had a wonderful visit until late into the night.
Let's talk about last minute gifts. Usually we make last minute gifts the week of Christmas or a day or two before, nope, this small tabletopper was done on Christmas day. While we watched a Christmas movie I whipped this up and finished it while hanging out with our guest and teaching him how to bind it. He's a wonderful friend of ours and loves to sew so he learned something new about quilting.

This small tabletopper uses strips of fabrics I had on hand. I won a Moda scrap bag from my lovely blogging friend Michelle so that's what I used. This is just siimple half square triangles like I did the mug rugs, except I didn't feel like marking all the diagonal lines, so I just took my 3" strips and started working on it. The instructions are below. I don't have diagrams but you can see the drawings here from my mug rug tutorial.

Supplies:

This tabletopper finishes about 19" square.
Various 3" strip fabrics
5/8 yd. backing fabric
4-2 1/2" strips for binding
Batting

Instructions:


Cut 41-3" squares light fabric
41 -3" squares dark fabric


Cut each square once on the diagonal. I like to stack a few at a time when cutting on the diagonal so it will go faster. Take one light and one dark triangle, right sides together and sew using 1/4" seam allowance. Do this for all the light and dark triangle pieces. You will have 82 half square triangles. You only need 81.


Sew 9 half square triangles for row one, and each row thereafter for a total of 9 rows. Sew the rows together.

Layer quilt top, batting and backing. Quilt as desired.


Binding: Cut 4 - 2 1/2" strips. Sew the strips together to create one long strip. Press in half wrong sides together. Sew onto quilt edges using your favorite binding method. Hand sew the back of the binding in place or machine stitch, whichever method you prefer.