Quilting for Lazy People

Today I thought I'd walk you through the process I go through when I make a quilt.  You can get quilt patterns in lots of places, but I usually don't. I like to start with graph paper, and work on that way what design I want to use. 

Once I have the pattern figured out, I pick out fabrics. I like colour, so I often use a bunch of colours in a single quilt.  

For this quilt, I used a pattern involving triangles.  I started with 4" squares, then cut them in half diagonally. I used 2 fabrics per block.

This pattern used 8 triangles (or 4 of the original squares) of each fabric. 

I matched one triangle of the first fabric to a triangle of the other fabric, then sewed them together along the long edge.

I move from one to the next one without cutting the thread, so they all end up in a chain rather like a sausage. (I hate cutting threads.)

Once I have the triangles sewn into squares, I arrange them to make sure I like the pattern.  Do I want to do blocks like this:

 

Or like this?

 

(Of course, there are other options as well.) Anyway, I chose the second one, and then I flipped one square over the other so that I could sew them together.  That created two strips of 4 triangles each, which I sewed together to make a square.

 When I had all the squares done, I laid them out on the fabric I'd chosen to go between them to find an arrangement I liked. (When I'm using a lot of different colours, I like to have one consistent fabric to tie them together.)

I then ripped 2" strips of the yellow fabric. I started with the middle section, because i had the big panel piece to work around.

Of course, I'm not super exact about how I cut and sew the blocks, so they're not all exactly the same size. That's OK - the yellow hides all of that.

Once I had the top completely done, I layered it with the batting and the flannel back piece. I like to have the batting a little bigger than the top, and the backing a little bigger than the batting.

Pin, being careful to catch all three layers (and not the bedspread it's lying on):

Once it's all pinned, flip it over to make sure the flannel back is lying flat - you don't want to have any folds.

If it's flat, it's time to start quilting.

My plan was to quilt down the yellow strips.

When I was done, I flipped it over again to make sure there were no folds.  Sadly, there were, so I had to rip out that seam and sew it again.  (I rip seams while watching Downton Abbey. I'm totally hooked, but I'm late to the party so I have no one to talk about it with.I just finished season 2.)

Once it was all quilted, the only piece left was the edge  This is where the larger back came in handy.  I folded the edge over once, then again until it overlapped the top (so that the edge is finished):

When I got to the corner, I folded it as I would if I were gift-wrapping a box:

And then again:

I then sewed around the entire edge to secure it, and here's the finished product:

This was a more complicated pattern, so it took about 5 hours from start to finish. 
 

More baby quilts

When I first started making baby quilts, it was a big deal. I only made them for people I was especially close to.

Now, I'll make them for anyone. I've gotten much faster (or possibly, less concerned with perfection).

Here are some of my more recent ones:

Now that I look at this one, it's pretty clear that the bottom diagonal square is 90 degrees off. Oops.



My first rainbow quilt - a.k.a. a good way to get rid of lots of scraps. (Don't tell anyone, but the green checked fabric is an old tea-towel. The pink backing is left over from some pajamas I made my niece.)

A mixed-up rainbow quilt. This one is more square. The orange patterned fabric is leftover from my kitchen curtains, and the navy and white checked fabric is from an old dress of my grandmother's.

Wanda had a belly dance workshop this weekend. It was in a awkward spot to bus to, so she took the car.

That meant I was at home by myself.

It was one of my most productive weekends in recent memory. I made the quilt (above). I made barbie doll clothes for my friend's daughter. I made myself a flannel nightgown for my "nightwear that lives in the drawer while I wear the same pair of pajamas" collection. I sanded down the hole in the bathroom wall (but didn't get around to painting). I even cleaned the fridge.

There were a few things I didn't get to, one of which was cleaning vegetables. You see, I've decided on another challenge. Every day in March, I'm going to eat raw vegetables. I do eat vegetables normally, but they are usually cooked vegetables. It's time to stop being lazy get motivated and clean/eat raw veggies regularly.

Wish me luck ....

Piecing it together

I know a couple of people who are pregnant, so this weekend I made two baby quilts.

I've done this before, but it has been a few years. It didn't take as long as I remember (possibly because I was motivated to get it done this weekend).

I'm not a perfectionist, so the resulting quilts are not perfect, but that's fine - they're intended to be used on a daily basis - to set on the floor for the baby to lie on, to cover up when reading a story, or whatever.

The unusual part of this project was that I didn't buy anything - not even thread. Everything I used was something I already had.

I'm happy with how they turned out. I would have liked to put a border of blue around the second quilt (to match the inner blue between the squares) but I didn't have enough blue, so that didn't happen.