rag quilt

 And just like that, it's March already.  About 2 weeks ago, I was talking to my son and he wanted to know what we were going to give his sister for her birthday.  I told him I was planning on making her a flannel rag quilt.  His response was, "in two weeks?"  Well, that kind of threw me.  I thought I had more time.  So I had to get going on it.  I went down to my fabric stash and pulled out two bins of flannel fabric.  I decided to make the blocks 6" finished, so I needed to cut them 7".  I wanted to make the quilt 12 blocks wide and 12 blocks high, and because it's a rag quilt, I needed double the number of squares, so a total of 288.  I was putting batting in, so that meant 144 6" squares of batting.  I can cut pretty fast with my rotary cutter, so away I went.  I think I had all the block cut by the end of the day.  

 

The next step is making little sandwiches of fabric and batting.  You put the fabric wrong sides together with the batting in the middle.  I pinned once along each edge, so I could sew from corner to corner.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used almost all solids, except for one print, and made each sandwich the same on each side, so when I put the blocks together, I didn't have to be concerned about the back side layout.  I counted how many I had of each color and punched 1" squares of colored paper and lay them out on a 12" grid.  Once I was satisfied, I stuck them down with a temporary adhesive, so I had something to follow.  

That made it easy to put all the blocks in rows and start sewing.  I tend to sew in couples or groups, so I took one row, sewed pairs of two squares together all across.  Then I sewed those groups together, until I had the row completed.  I continued in that manner until I had 12 rows.  Then I did the same thing with sewing the rows together -- two at a time, then grouping.  The seam allowance is 1/2", because those get clipped and frayed. 

You can see how it looks as I started to clip the seam allowances.  You just have to be careful that you don't cut into the stitching.  I used my applique scissors, because they are razor sharp, and you are clipping through four layers of fabric.  Your fingers and hands get pretty tired and stressed.  I had to take a lot of breaks. 

Once all the seams are clipped, then you wash and tumble dry the quilt.  That cause the clipped seams to fray and get a nice fuzzy look.  

Here's the finished quilt.  It took me six days from start to finish.  I broke one needle on my sewing machine and donated blood about five times, because I had some aggressive pins.  But I got it done in time for her birthday.  

I'm setting this post on a delayed publish, because I don't want her to see it, just in case she checks my blog.