I love to make quilts, although I wouldn’t call myself any kind of expert or great at making them. The concept of making something from fabric scraps or recycling materials really appeals to me, but I have yet to master many techniques, design, and color coordination. I usually just see something I like and try to figure it out which sometimes comes out good, other times not so much. I’m always in awe of intricate quilts with amazing designs. Maybe someday I’ll take a class and learn all the proper techniques. Until then, I’ll keep winging it and loving what I make, however imperfect it ends up being. 🙂

There’s a bit of a baby craze going on at work. This quilt is for a co-worked that delivered a healthy baby boy last Wednesday. Another co-worker was surprised to learn that she was 32 weeks pregnant!! Yes, no typo there – 32 weeks!!! She hadn’t been feeling well and we were all terribly worried about her. Turns out she’s healthy and happily pregnant, much to her and her husband’s surprise! Long story short, they had been trying for many years and had just decided that it wasn’t meant to be and they were moving on with their lives. They are over the moon (and in shock) and we are all so happy for them.  I need to get started on a quilt for her as well – more to come in another post.

Since I was in a hurry to get this quilt done, I “cheated” a bit on this quilt and bought a package of strips, ready to sew, at Joann’s. Normally I like to recycle old clothes or use scraps, but these pretty blue and gray flannel strips were hard to resist. I used 3 strips each of 2 1/2″ wide by 42″ long of 5 different fabrics and then 4 strips of a border fabric. The strip on the right with all the stripes is what I used for the border.

Next, I started sewing the strips together, left to right until I sewed 5 strips together, then started over on the left again. In the picture below, the first two strips are sewn together.

I just kept sewing the strips together until I had sewn all of them together. Then, I sewed the 2 edges together so that the fabric was tube-shaped.

I then cut the tube into 6 pieces, 7″ wide. So now I had 6 tubes that are each 7″ wide.

I ripped out one seam so that I had a strip again instead of a tube. You can do this anywhere to start with. On the next tube, I ripped out the seam on the next strip over from the seam I ripped on the first tube. For example, in the picture above if I ripped the seam out between the pawprints and the gray with blue squiggly strip for my first tube, on the second tube, I would rip out the seam between the gray with blue squiggly and blue with white polka dot. I kept following this process, moving over one strip on each of the next tubes. As I placed the strips out on a table, a diagonal pattern started to appear.

Next, I sewed the strips together in order.

Then, I sewed a strip of the border fabric to the top and bottom of the quilt, then on each of the long sides.

I like to add a piece of fleece to the back of quilts instead of using batting and a backing. I find it super easy to put together and it’s the perfect weight for a winter quilt here in the South. The fleece is also nice and soft! I purchased 1 yard of 60″ wide fleece in a pretty gray color.

Lay the fleece on a large table and place the quilt top over it, face up. Trim around the edge of the fleece so that there is about an inch more fleece than the quilt top all the way around.

Once you have both pieces laying nice and flat together, pin it in lots of places. I pin it everywhere I can until I run out of pins. 🙂 I don’t want to worry about it shifting when I bring it to the machine or while I am sewing.

Next, I stitched it together in a couple of different places -all around the border and across each strip, stitching in the stitch line so that it hardly shows.

I sewed all around the border first, but in hindsight would have done this last because I ended up with a little puckering in a couple of spots where the strips met the border. Either way I think is ok, but probably a good idea to work from the middle out. Once the stitching was done, I took out all the pins and got ready to add the satin binding.

I like to add the satin baby blanket binding to the baby quilts. Start in one corner and pin down one edge. I only pin it on the first side to get started, then just hold it in place once I turn the first corner. I sew the binding on using a zig zag stitch.

This satin binding can be finicky to sew with! I tend to start sewing along and then it puckers and gets a little out of whack, almost like the top is longer than the bottom – hard to explain but super frustrating. There may be a special way to deal with this, but my way is to hold the quilt with the satin trim in the back of the machine and in the front. I hold it tight and kind of walk it through myself instead of letting the machine pull it through. I’m not sure if that’s the “right” way to do it, but it works for me and the binding doesn’t pucker. 🙂

And this is how I turn the corners. Sew all the way to the end, then kind of fold the satin so that it looks kind of like a mitered corned when done.

At the end, this is how I tucked under the edges. Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing… next time I think I’ll put the excess binding on the back/fleece side instead of the top. I think that would make cleaner finish.

 

 

That’s it! Clipped any remaining threads and here is the finished quilt. 🙂