Irish Chain AccuQuilt Blog Hop

Pitchers Boutique
May 7
5 min read

This month our Island Batik fabric challenge was to use our Accuquilt cutters to create an irish chain quilt. We all received a winter 2024 collection, and I received Essence by Jerry Kheiv. This collection reminds me of all the different animal prints; with prints of zebra, cheetah, etc. Its a fun whimsical collection and its the perfect cool color collection with dark purple, dark blue, teal blue, light blue and lime green. This collection is absolutely some of my favorite colors.

Accuquilt was wonderful enough to send us their Irish Chain die plate and this made each block a 100 times easier to cut. Being able to layer up the fabric made it so that I could cut several blocks all at once. I cut my fabric into 2 1/2 inch strips for all the smaller block sizes and a 4 1/2 inch block for the larger center block. This gave the die just enough room to trim and make that perfect square (or rectangle) needed.

I had everything cut with in a few hours, and that was all my background fabric and all of the fabric from the collection. I decided to use the fondant, one of the neutral batiks as my background. It is an off white almost grey like batik with a chevron pattern. It balanced the cool colors of the Essence collection perfectly.

The accuquilt is one of the best die cutting machines, especially if you have a hard time with cutting a lot of pieces. The machine is slightly heavier than you would think, so if you have a place to set it up that is probably ideal. The dies can be long or short depending on what you are cutting. This plate is a longer plate so I have to use the longer cutting mat that goes on top of the die and fabric.

The accuquilt cutting machine in the background and my folded fabric on the Irish chain die cutting board.

Once the fabric is sent through the machine, the fabric comes out all cut into each shape.

The waste is minimal, especially when you cut your fabric to the correct size (i used a scrap piece in this photo so I had a lot more waste).

I should have taken a photo of all my pieces of fabric cut because the pile was huge, but instead I organized all my pieces, and clipped them together because I wanted to chain piece them.

You can see that the accuquilt die also cuts off the corners, which creates less bulk in the blocks and also helps when you line up two pieces of fabric. This helped me so much as I chain pieced all of these blocks.

All the pieces of the Irish chain block ready to be assembled.

The first section of chain piecing. I keep them all attached as well, so I just have to fold and line up the intersections. I love this kind of chain piecing.

I chain pieced each block by sewing the center three rows, then chain piecing the top, the new center with the outer edges and then the bottom. At the end you have a perfect finished block.

You can see how easy this block is when you chain piece as well. I did this through the entire collection. I stacked all the blocks one on top of the other and chain pieced away.

Once I had all the blocks finished and sewn together I then cut out all the strips and squares I needed to finish the quilt top. I did use the accuquilt die cut for the squares but hand cut the strips as I needed them to be the width of the finished block size.

This is only about 1/3rd of the blocks finished up.

Strips, squares and the blocks all ready to go.

The mental load it took me to start sewing this quilt top together was way more than it probably should have been. However, I am not great with the diagonal row sewing, and then I also get so confused when I need to cut the triangles to add to the ends. These rows that you sew together that go diagonally I am telling you, this is exactly why I love foundation paper piecing.

I would show you an image of the piecing laying all over my floor but this took so much brain power, I literally forgot to get any photos of it. I am telling you, my brain HURT after putting this top together, only because traditional piecing is always hard for me. I probably made it harder than it should have been as well, because I typically do. I am joking, but am I?

Once I had the front all sewn together I then used the last of all the fabric and started making a really large Irish chain block, for the back. I also used two more fabrics to help with the large pieces, as I was now pretty close to running out of the fondant and was down to scraps of the collection left.

Ice from bodacious blacks, the circle in purple from the collection, and bluebelle from the brilliant blues.

After I had the very large irish chain block made for the back, I was still about 30 inches short for the back, so I added all the remaining strips of scraps from the collections around the edge.

I then had my back which was about 100 x 100 inches as my front was about 98 x 98.

I grabbed my Hobbs premium cotton batting and all my scraps of it so I could make it fit my quilt and got to sandwiching this giant beast of a quilt.

Yes, I ended up moving my dinning room table and cleaning my floor to make room so I could bast this quilt. It is that big.

Thats a 9 foot dinning room table I had to move, by myself.

Finally, with this beast of a quilt put together, I got started quilting it. I used the white Aurifil thread and just did a simple stitch in the ditch along all the seams. I added a little extra straight lines on the corners to continue the pattern of lines to help secure those corners.

Yes, I did in fact finish two spoons of my Aufiril white while sewing this quilt.

I spent about 4 hours using my walking foot, to quilt this quilt. This quilt was so heavy too.

For the binding I used the fondant nuetral batik again, which tied the entire quilt together. I am glad to have this one finished as it is massive. I love the colors, the collection and the simple yet perfect quilting design. The accuquilt made this queen size quilt cutting a simple task. If I had to cut everything by hand I probably would still be cutting all those squares and rectangles out.

Be sure to enter the giveaway and be sure to check out all the other ambassadors during this blog hop:

Brenda Alburl- https://songbirddesigns.blog

Renee Atkinson- https://wordpress.com/posts/pinktulipquilting.studio

Susan Deshensky- www.ladybluequilts.com/blog

Tina Dillard- https://quiltingaffection.blogspot.com/

Brittany Fisher- Www.bobbinwithbrittany.com

Kimberly Flannagan- https://www.kimberlysquilts.com/blog

Preeti Harris- https://sewpreetiquilts.blogspot.com

Mania Hatziioannidi- www.maniaforquilts.com

Kim Jamieson-Hirst- https://www.chatterboxquilts.com/blog

Connie Kauffman- Kauffmandesigns.blogspot.com

Connie Kresin Campbell- https://conniekresin.com/