Ever since I was a little girl (ok, littler than I am now) I've wanted to make a quilt. I had a lovely quilt that I slept with that had old fashioned ladies on it. No, not Sun Bonnet Sue - another more elegant lady with a parasol. Anyway, I adored that quilt. Still do, but it's only allowed out for special occasions because the cotton has worn away in spots exposing the batting. Recently I decided to check out a few books from the library on quilting and see how it's done.
Whoah.
There's much more math involved in quilting than I'm really comfortable with. Darling Husband has offered his logical, mathematical skills to help with the process - but I'm still intimidated. Well, I
was intimidated. Now I'm excited about creating a real quilt after completing my first practice quilt.
Dear Delilahh is my craftiest friend. She taught me how to embroider a few years back and I'm addicted. Well, I mentioned the quilt desire to her and she offered to teach me. Of course she quilts. I should have known. Anyway, right after I returned the quiltmath books to the library Delilahh emailed me with images of
rag quilts, explaining they were easy and the perfect starter quilt. I decided to make a baby rag quilt for my friend Viv who's having a boy in a few months.
Rag quilts are made with cotton fabrics, usually flannel because it's soft and frays really well. After about an hour in SAS Fabrics (amazing bargain buy by the pound fabric store in Lawndale, CA) I arrived at Delilahh's nest with a huge bag of fabric and a burning desire to quilt. She showed me how to fold and measure and cut the flannel and taught me how to use my rotary cutter safely. She showed me how to make the flannel sandwiches and how to attach them and assemble my quilt. Then we ate pizza, blended essential oils, cut hair and talked girl talk. With that bit of instruction I was on my own... And here's how it went!
Gobs of flannel, and choices... which ones for the baby boy?
Cut, cut, cut. The cutting went by quickly, probably because I had kitty-help.
After all the squares were cut I assembled them into little sandwiches and sewed each sandwich together. On one special square I hand-embroidered the baby boys name.
The final layout. Darling Husband helped, thankfully.
The basic quilt. Note the exposed edges. I may be a messy sewer, but really it's supposed to look like this. All of these edges are then snipped into little fringes 1/4" apart. Then you wash the quilt a few times and those edges fray, giving it the ragged look. Hence the name rag quilt. :P Captain Henry really likes the quilt.
The final quilt, from the other side. Only the topside is frayed, the bottom is smooth. I like it.
After one washing. Nice fraying, but I will wash it a few more times. Hope the mom and little one enjoy the quilt as much as I enjoyed making it.
