I thought it might be too late in the game to start going with some quilts, but I was wrong! Here's a quick way to make something lovely for someone in your life that might need warming up. I chose shot cottons for their vibrant colours and for the way they wash-- the slightly lower thread count makes them shrink a little more than average quilting cotton, leaving the finished project super soft. Also, because they are shot cottons, they are woven with different colour threads in the same family, so after you pull it out of the dryer, the fabric takes on a silky sheen.
Of course, this project would look great with just about any print. I made a similar one from large scale floral cottons. It reminds me of the best kind of wallpaper.
For this project I used:
- 3 yards shot cotton, cut into fat quarters (approx. 18 by 22" for each square)
- 2 yards 90" cotton batting
- 4 yards backing fabric (if you position your quarters vertically, you'll have a long, skinny quilt and will only need 3 yards backing)
- Enough fabric for 2 1/2" binding.
- yard stick or long ruler
- tailors chalk or water soluble pen
- safety pins or needle and thread for basting
Trim and square your fabric into equal rectangles. Lay out in a pleasing way. Sew together individual rectangles in rows, press seams open, then piece the rows together matching the corners. Press top. You are done with the top!
Piece your back together so that your dimensions are slightly larger than your quilt top. Press. Make a quilt sandwich. I tape my backing fabric, wrong side up, to the floor. Then I layer my cotton batting and trim it to the size of the backing fabric. Finally, I line up my quilt top up on the top so that the backing fabric shows around all four sides. Pin or baste the whole thing together.
For my quilting lines, I used a ruler and tailor's chalk to draw in zigzag lines across the rectangles. This made the quilting a little interesting and a lot quick!
To bind the quilt, I sewed together strips of 2 1/2" fabric together to equal the dimensions of the quilt (a few inches longer than 260"). Machine stitch binding down on one side and either hand stitch or machine stitch the binding down on the back side. Here's a machine stitch tutorial from last year. You tube is full of great how-tos on mitered corners and hand stitched binding!
You are finished! This took me an evening to prep and piece, a nap time to pin and bind, and another (long-ish) evening to hand stitch the binding down. You might try tying the sandwich together, instead of quilting it if that seems too daunting. The simple shape would look fantastic with gridded tying.
Nice quilting...I'm diggin' the zig!
Posted by: Grammie | 03/10/2011 at 04:32 PM
Just a quick note to say "thanks" for this post. I tagged it when it first came out (over a year ago!) figuring someday I'd make my kids quilts, and this looked both awesome and not-too-hard for a first quilt project. I'm happy to say that I made these for my kids this Christmas and they turned out great! (I made two.)
I modified slightly...I only made them 3x3 squares instead of 4x3. Since my kids are not too big (5 and 7 years) this was the perfect size. It also allowed me to buy one queen sized quilt batting and get both quilts out of it. I was also able to buy one length of the queen sized quilt backing and cut both backings out of it. Of course, I had to pick a color that worked for both kids, one of whom is a boy and the other a girl. I went with dark brown for the back, and it worked nicely for both. I didn't have too much trouble picking fabrics for my daughter, but discovered it's not so easy to pick prints for a boy who is too old for firetrucks and such. I ended up going with a batik print that worked out great.
Anyway, it was a fun project...thanks so much for the ideas/inspiration!
Posted by: Jenny Lisk | 02/09/2012 at 11:58 AM