How to make a patchwork quilt
Kelly at imperfect homemaking made her 3 year old daughter a rag quilt for her bed. This beautiful rag quilt is filled with wonderful colour and pattern that is perfect for any little girl's bed and you can choose your own fabrics, either from scraps that you already have, or from offcuts in the bargain bin at your local fabric store.
HERE'S HOW:
1. Cut your pieces. I cut mine to be 20cm square. At this stage you don't have to be particularly precise....you'll see why later. An easy way to cut your squares is just by cutting some strips that are 20cm wide (or whatever size you need) and then turning an edge over to make a triangle. Cutting along the edge of the triangle will give you a decent square.
2. Cut plenty of squares of quilt batting. Mine were 15cm square. My quilt has 10 rows of 13 squares, so I needed 130 squares of batting and 260 squares of fabric.
3. Layer a piece of batting between 2 fabric squares and machine stitch a X across it.
4. As you can see my pieces aren't perfectly lined up. What I found is that even if you start off with 2 precisely cut pieces of fabric, it can be difficult and tedious to keep the layers nicely lined up. And, between you and me, I am more likely to stab myself in the eyeball with a seam ripper than complete a project that is tedious and time consuming.
So, I solved the problem by cutting the squares fairly imprecisely and not worrying too much about keeping everything perfectly in place while stitching. Instead I just cut the finished square again with a rotary cutter and a cardboard template. The result is nicely lined up and precise squares without having to stab myself in the eye out of sheer frustration.
5. Once you've completed steps 3 and 4 with all of your cut pieces, you can begin assembling your quilt. Remember to sew your squares together wrong sides together. I had to rip a few seams out because I kept forgetting that I want the seams on the right side!
6. Sit down to a few good movies with a sharp pair of scissor and snip all of the edges so that the seams will fray up nicely. Be careful not to cut any stitches.
7. Wash and dry the quilt to get the seams to fray nicely. It will take a few washes to get really frayed, but if you're in a hurry (and I was) one wash will be a good start.
Don't these colours just make your heart happy?