Gentlemen's Quarters Tutorial

I finished the Gentlemen's Quarters quilt top this morning.





So, as promised here are the instructions for the Gentlemen's Quarters quilt I posted about HERE. For a long period of time this pattern could be found on the McCall's Quilting website. But, it has been removed, so I put together these basic instructions.

This is a very simple quilt. Its just made of squares set on point with setting triangles and borders.

**** I highly recommend that you cut some sample squares and setting triangles and sew them together before you cut all the pieces.

These instructions will yield a quilt that is 85 by 101. The original quilt was full size, but I needed it to be larger, so I just cut the blocks 5 1/2 inches instead of 5 inches and made the borders wider. I even added an extra 3 inch border.

If you want to make another size quilt, just adjust the size of the squares and borders. At the bottom of this post there are two pictures that show the original quilt made according to the McCall's Quilting instructions, which yields a full size quilt.

First you will need to cut 142 - five and 1/2 inch squares in the colors of your choice. You can alternate the blocks with a solid color or make them all plaid or what ever you decide on. If you want to alternate them like I did, you would need 70 plaid or colored squares and 72 solid color squres.

You will also need 80 setting triangles. The setting triangles and the first border need to be the same color so that the squares in the center of the quilt will "float". You will need to cut these setting triangles from 8 3/8 inch squares by cutting across the square diagonally two times. Cutting the triangles this way will prevent the outside edge of the quilt top from being stretchy.

If you decide to make your squares a different size there is a formula for figuring out the size the square needs to be or you can just look at a chart like the one shown HERE on the Quiltville site. If you look at the finished size of your squares to be set on point, the chart gives you the size of the square that the setting triangles are to be cut from.

It is very helpful if you have a bed or design wall on which to lay out your blocks and triangles. Lay out the squares and triangles on the diagonal of the bed. In other words you start at one corner.

Some of the rows:



After sewing all the blocks together into rows, you will start sewing rows together in the corner.



Its important to make sure all the corners of the squares match.



Each of the 4 corners are made up of two of the setting triangles.



Sew half the rows together. Then sew the other half of the rows together. You will have two big triangles to sew together which yields the center of the quilt top.



At this point its a good idea to measure the outside of your quilt to be sure there is at least 1/4 inch all the way around the quilt top so that when you sew on the first border you don't lose any points. I used a clear ruler and a pen to make sure the distance from the points of the squares were as near the same all the way around as possible. Its ok if there is more than 1/4 inch since that will just give you more float space.



On my version of this quilt top I cut the first border, which is the same fabric as the setting triangles, 3 1/2 inches wide for a 3 inch finished border.



I cut the next border 3 1/2 inches wide for a 3 inch border and the final border 7 1/2 inches wide for a 7 inch border.



This is a picture of the original pattern which yielded a full size quilt.



This is the first quilt that I made for my son using his old jeans and flannel, which is a full size quilt. As you can see it didn't have as many borders as my current version.



I hope these instructions are helpful and not too confusing!