Easy, Thrifty, Pretty Rag Quilt {Tutorial}

For Christmas I made my 3 year old  daughter a rag quilt for her bed.  And in my very imperfect fashion, I left it a little late.  Like, um, oh....CHRISTMAS EVE.

I started off well,  I was cutting the pieces a whole month before the big day.  But in the hubbub of life I managed to put the rest of the project off.  But it's okay. Because the gift was ready in time.  And you know what?  Now I can assure you that this is the kind of project you can finish in one evening.  In one insanely long evening.

Or maybe you'll choose to sleep occasionally and stretch this project out over a few days or weeks?  To each her own...

Step One.  Cut your pieces.  I cut mine to be 7 inches 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 7 inches 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.

Step Two: Cut a boat load of squares of quilt batting.  Mine were 6 inches square.  My quilt has 10 rows of 13 squares, so I needed  130 squares of batting and 260 squares of fabric.

Step Three: layer a piece of batting between 2 fabric squares and machine stitch a X across it.

Step Four: As you can see my pieces aren't perfectly lined up in the quilted square pictured above.  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 (as mentioned in step one) 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 6 1/2 inch cardboard template.  The result is nicely lined up and precise squares without having to stab myself in the eye out of sheer frustration.

Step Five:  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!

Step Six: 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.

Step Seven: 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?

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