Pattern Review: Chicken Quilt by Cluck Cluck Sew

This chicken quilt was one of my favorite makes of 2025 and I’m so proud of it! My sewing room floor was covered with scrap fabrics for months while I sorted through them to find the perfect ones to use for these chicken quilt blocks. Some of these hen quilt blocks were inspired by my own real life flock and it was super fun to try and find fabric to match them.

The pattern for this quilt is by Cluck Cluck Sew and in this review I share my thoughts on the pattern, the fabrics I used, some tools I found helpful and an overview of the process. This was also my first time trying free motion quilting and I love how the scallop pattern looks like eggs or feathers – a perfect pairing for this quilty flock of hens. 🙂

I started this quilt in August, right in the middle of working on my Sampler Quilt blocks and I gradually worked on it in between other projects like my Charley Charm Tote, designing the Petal Patch Scarf (pattern coming soon!) and this Fall Table Runner. I finished it just in time to cozy up under it for the cooler months.

The Pattern

The pattern I used to make this chicken quilt is the Chickens #185 PDF pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew. This is a fat quarter friendly pattern, uses simple piecing techniques and comes in 3 quilt sizes. I made the largest size which has a finished dimension of 67″ x 74 1/2″ with a total of 25 chicken quilt blocks.

The instructions also include measurements to make the individual chicken blocks, Block 1 (standing chicken) and Block 2 (nesting chicken). To make it easier for me when cutting out of scrap fabric, I made a template for each block using the provided piece dimensions.

This was only my second official quilt pattern to follow and I found the instructions pretty straightforward and easy to understand! The cutting instructions are written to use up the fabric efficiently and to save time when cutting. Since I was using scrap fabric for the chickens, I only used the cutting instructions for my background fabric and labeled all the pieces (there’s a lot!) as I went to stay organized.

The instructions to make all the blocks flow in an efficient way and it has you batch sewing different sections together, like the chicken’s beaks, combs and feet. I would say this pattern is good for confident beginners and it would be helpful to have some practice with quilting before tackling this specific pattern. However, after making each of the two types of blocks, you get the hang of it pretty quickly!

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Fabric

For my chicken blocks I used only scrap fabric leftover from sewing clothes and each one is different (with just a few fabrics repeated in the wings or nests). Most of the linen and blockprint cottons are either from Matchy Matchy Sewing Club or Blackbird Fabrics with a few other fabrics from The Linen Lab, Fluid + Drape, Saltlake Sewciety or Lyrical Fabrics thrown in there as well. (These also happen to be some of my favorite online fabric shops 🙂 )

To keep things simple, I used pretty much the same two or three fabrics for the chicken’s combs, beaks and feet.

I knew I wouldn’t have enough fabric in my stash for the background, so I used a Faux Linen Tonal quilting cotton from Connecting Threads in this nice creamy color. It also helped to give structure to all the shifty linen and lightweight cotton scraps I used and ties them all together nicely.

The backing fabric is an extra wide backing fabric from Connecting Threads (kindly gifted) it was so nice to just lay out the backing fabric when basting and not have to worry about piecing it together. I love bias check pattern and this fabric is very smooth and soft to the touch.

The batting I used is Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 Batting from Connecting Threads and has a great amount of loft – not too much and not too little. It’s one of my go-to battings that I use for most of my quilts or quilty projects!

Tools Used

These are all the tools I used when making this quilt and what I generally use when making quilts.

• 12″ x 24″ quilting ruler
• Rotary blade and cutting mat
• All purpose thread
• Quilting thread when quilting (also used when sewing the binding) – I used this Coat’s & Clark machine quilting thread
• Walking foot
• Basting Pins
• Masking tape – used when basting the quilt.
• Free motion foot (or darning foot)
• Quilter’s gloves – These were super useful in order to get a good grip on the quilt when free motion quilting (I purchased a size XS).
• Iron

The Process

I’ll just give a brief overview of the process of making this chicken quilt, but if you need more details on quilt making you might want to check out my tutorial How to Make a Quilt where I go through each step in making a nine patch quilt.

Cutting Out Pieces

The first step is of course cutting out all the pieces you need. Follow the chart carefully in the instructions to make sure you’re cutting out the right amount of strips and pieces needed. The pattern uses strip cutting, a common method in quilting, where you first cut strips and then cut squares or rectangles from those strips.

There are a lot of pieces, some really tiny, so it really helps to stay organized while you’re cutting. I labeled all my stacks of cut pieces as I went and kept them together in a plastic container. Throughout the instructions, the pieces are referred to by their cut measurement (ex: 3″ x 7 1/2″), so it helps to label them that way. (See photos below)

Since I was using the same fabric for the background, I cut those pieces out all together but then cut out the pieces for the chicken blocks individually. Near the end, I got tired of cutting for each block one at a time, so I ended up batch cutting out the pieces for the different chicken blocks, put them on a labeled piece of paper and then stacked them together in a container (see photos below). This did require planning which fabrics I wanted to use ahead of time, but then I could pick up those pieces and sew up a chicken block in between other projects.

Making The Chicken Blocks

Making the chicken blocks was the funnest part for me! It uses simple piecing techniques and I pretty much had the process memorized by the end. For reference, each block took me about 30 minutes to make. Below is a quick video of the process of making one chicken block;

I stuck to natural colors for each chicken, like brown, red, black, white and a few yellows sprinkled in and tried to have a good balance of solid, patterned and floral chickens.

I pinned a scrap piece of batting to my wall to hang up the chickens as I finished them. This gave an idea of how the fabrics were looking together and which ones to pick next.

It was a good day when all the chicken blocks were done! I then laid them out in the way the pattern instructed and then arranged (and re-arranged) the fabrics until the colors looked balanced.

After deciding on a layout, the next step was to sew some vertical sashing (border) strips, sew the blocks into rows and then sew long horizontal sashing strips between the rows. Then I gave the whole quilt top a good ironing.

Basting

Next up was basting the quilt, aka making a (chicken) quilt sandwich. 🙂 This was a time consuming step but it meant that I was that much closer to finishing this quilt!

When I baste quilts, I first start by ironing the backing fabric and placing it right side down on a hard surface. I use masking tape to secure the backing in place and make sure it’s nice and flat. To help remove wrinkles from the batting, I stick it in the dryer for a little bit with a damp hand towel. Then I lay the batting down on top of the backing and lining it up at a corner. Lastly the quilt top goes right side up and I spend a while smoothing out all the wrinkles and making sure it’s laying as flat as possible.

I like to pin baste using curved back safety pins, but you can also choose to spray baste with a spray adhesive designed for basting quilts. It was really convenient using this extra wide backing fabric from Connecting Threads (affiliate link) because I didn’t have to spend time piecing the backing fabric together.

You can also see where I started to draw diagonal lines to prepare for quilting, but changed my mind about doing that pattern.

Below is a video of the basting process for my chicken quilt:

Quilting

I had no idea what quilting pattern to do on this quilt at first. I spent a little time looking online for inspiration and actually tried doing a wave pattern (see photo below). I wasn’t loving how it looked, so I unpicked all those rows and kept looking for quilting ideas.

I then found this Chicken Quilt by Emily of Quilty Love (plus a free chicken block pattern!) quilted with a scalloped pattern and immediately knew that’s what I wanted to try for my chicken quilt! The only problem was I had no idea how to do free motion quilting (or FMQ) which is the technique used to make this scallop or clamshell pattern. I read through this Quilty Love FMQ tutorial, watched a few videos on YouTube (like this video by Suzy Quilts), practiced on some scrap fabric, and then I just went for it.

Since my machine has a pretty small arm, I knew the hardest part would be fitting the quilt in there and dealing with the small workspace. Because of that, I could really only do one scallop at a time before needing to readjust which made the whole quilting process pretty time consuming.

The only measuring I did was at the beginning and I spaced the scallops every 3 inches apart and 2 1/2″ tall but then free handed each scallop shape as I went. It’s definitely not perfect and I made plenty of mistakes, but I love how it turned out! This scallop pattern reminds me of feathers or eggs and that just felt perfect for this chicken quilt. 🙂

If you’re curious, I put together a YouTube video together showing how got my machine set up for FMQ and the process of quilting this scallop pattern.

Binding

Last step was the binding! I used this chartreuse linen and hand stitched the binding down.

If you need a binding tutorial, including how to calculate yardage for binding, head over to my article How to Make a Quilt – just skip to the binding section using the table of contents.

Washing & Drying

I couldn’t wait to wash and dry the quilt to see how the texture would look. The picture below on the left is before washing and the one on the right is after washing. I washed the quilt on a cold normal cycle and dried in the dryer (low heat) to get that gorgeous crinkle. The scallop pattern makes such a wonderful bubbly texture!

Ok I know it was risky bringing my freshly washed chicken quilt down to the coop but I had a vision and the chickens just had to be in the picture – I love how the hens are admiring the quilt as well. 🙂 It feels wonderful to be done with this quilt after months of work (many of you know the feeling) and I love everything about it!

I hope you enjoyed reading about my journey making this chicken quilt. Let me know if you have any questions about the process!