Bacon Quilt-along: Adding the Background

To view the main Bacon Quilt-along post and find links to all of the steps, click here.

 Once you have sewn together your bacon strips, you need to add background fabric to the ends.
Cut a width of your background fabric 14" wide. Trim off the selvages and barely trim off the fold, giving you two pieces about 14" by 21-ish" inches. Using your dresden ruler for the angle and your long straight ruler in the method described in the previous post, cut them into two pieces. The top of my smaller piece, pictured on the right, measured 6". If you want yours a little different go with it!

Next sew one short piece to one end of one bacon, and a long piece to the other. Make sure that when you lay it out the angles add up to make it "straight."

When you flip the background piece down to line up the edge, it will look like this. Be sure to pin as you've got bias edges. Stitch and press.

 Do the other end the same way. This is my short end.

Repeat on the other strip of bacon. Check to make sure you have the bacon strips facing the way you want them to go and so that the ends will be offset from each other as seen in the finished quilt.

Once you have sewn the background onto the ends you need to trim the long edges of your bacon strips. Line up your ruler with the innermost edges of your waves and cut off the extra. Go all the way down both sides of both pieces of bacon until both are straight.

Another example of where you will line up your ruler:

Now it's time to cut the remainder of the background pieces. Lay out both of your bacon strips and measure how long they are. Hopefully they are the same. Mine measured 86.25", yours may be a little different.

You will need three more background pieces, and they can all be cut from one width of fabric the same length that you measured your bacon. Carefully fold the length of the fabric a few times so that it is shorter than your ruler. Cut one pieces 6.5"wide, one piece 4.5" wide, and the other piece 24" wide.

Arrange pieces as follows:
24" piece, bacon #1, 4.5" piece, bacon #2, 6.5" piece. The edges of the bacon are full of bias edges so carefully pin everything.

We're almost done! Next week we'll do letters, I'll talk about how I quilted mine, and I'll give you instructions for bias bacon binding if you're interested.

Anyone want to do a linky? Or just share on Instagram with the tag #baconalong? I'd really love to see yours!

Please let me know if you have any questions!