What is cheater sashing? + A Granny Square Quilt (quilt reveal)

Hey sweet quilt loving people!  The above is a bit of Fall happening outside my home and here is a bit of Fall happening inside….

This is a granny square quilt block.  You remember we went into all the details and tutorial here.  It’s one of my favorite quilt blocks and I’ve wanted to make a quilt with this block for years.  Instead of using my scrap bins for this project I’ve used men’s dress shirts.  They were sent to me by someone who wanted a keepsake of her father.  Remember the last one I did?  Working with men’s dress shirts is pretty much exactly like working with quilting cottons.  So if you’ve wanted to make a memory quilt with clothing and don’t want to fool with all the knits or interfacing, this would be a good option for you.

But all that is not what this post is about.  This post is about cheater sashing.  You may know about this under a different name, but I don’t.  I dubbed it cheater sashing, because I don’t know what else it would be called and I haven’t ever heard it called anything.  I only first imagined it when I was designing my pineapple blocks, view them here.  Even if I imagined it, I’m sure it’s been done before, I’m not trying to take credit for this idea.  It probably has a REAL name by some genius quilting woman from long ago.  Do you know it?

My issue is that I despise putting sashing on a quilt (not the look, just the doing it), and nobody has ever showed me this way, or told me to do it this way, and I’m kinda ill that I’m only just now thinking about it 9 years into quilt making.  All those years of adding sashing.  Groan.  I believe in the sharing of all quilting information, and so I’ll be sharing this method with you.

But until I learn the REAL name, around here we are calling it cheater sashing.

So what is this cheater sashing you are raving about?

You make your quilt block like you always do.  Then, you add sashing to one corner.  Let’s say that you want sashing to be 2″.  And let’s say that your quilt block is 12.5″ unfinished.  You will cut one strip of sashing fabric to measure 2.5×12.5″ and a second strip of sashing fabric to measure 2.5×14.5″.  The shorter strip gets sewn to the side of your block and the longer strip gets sewn to the bottom of your block.  Be sure to sew the strips on the same corner of every block in your quilt.  When you add your blocks to your design wall, your sashing is almost completely done.

Do you see it?  The sashing has been added to the left of all my blocks.  Isn’t it magical?

Okay, there is one more step left.  Once all the blocks are sewn together, I still have to add sashing to the far right of the quilt and to the top of the quilt.  Even so, is that not cheating on sashing a quilt?  Are you wowed?  I am and shame on everyone for not telling me this before!

I know, my dear readers, that you have heard my grumbles about sashing!  Someone should have told me about this secret sashing method.

Finished Quilt pictures

I mentioned before that this quilt is a memory quilt.  It’s meant to honor and remember a person by repurposing their clothing into a quilt to bring comfort to a loved one.

The framed picture is not the man who wore the clothing used in this quilt.  The framed picture is my father in law (who I never got the chance to meet), but I thought that by using it in this photo it really showed how moving and meaningful making a quilt with clothing of a loved one can be.

I quilted with my usual meander that I love so much and find so therapeutic to sew.  This will actually be a video tutorial coming up on the Little Miss Sawtooth Quilt along I have going on right now.  I think it will release the first Friday in November.

For the sashing on this quilt, I used Pure Elements in snow by Art Gallery fabrics.  I love the feel of their fabrics!  And the colors!

I realize that I normally use low volumes in the place of white, but I felt like in the case of this memory quilt that they would distract from the clothing.

For the backing fabric, I used Shannon minky solid in white snow.  It made the quilt very thick, heavy and warm.

I also used a different batting.  The Warm Company sent me a pack of Warm 100 to try (my usual is Warm and Natural), but I REALLY liked this batting and I’m going to do a product review of it soon and tell you the differences and why I like it so much.

For the binding, I used Cannon Wall by April Rhodes.  I’m really into yellow binding lately.  Have you noticed?

If you are interested in purchasing a memory granny square quilt, you can read the details here.

Quilt Details

Measures 62×77″.

Features 20 granny square blocks that measured 13.5″ using this tutorial.  Note that I also added a 2.5″ cheater sashing to each block.

Other sashing was a 2.5×75.5″ added to the side, and a sashing that measured 2.5×62″ to the top.