Quilts'R'Us

Well, here I go again.... 

A couple of years ago on a shopping trip with my two daughters, Emma and Vicky, Vic saw a quilt in a department store and stated that she really liked it.  It was a quilt made up of squares of grey and black material - not sure what the material was.  I (stupidly) said that if she wanted one I could make her one and she instantly jumped at the offer.

Well two years later I have now completed it!

I have a favourite charity shop where the clothes are cheap so knowing that you get more material for your money in larger clothes, I began collecting men's XL shirts in black, grey, plaid (grey/white/black) and added an accent colour of turquoise.  Her bedroom has a turquoise coloured carpet so I thought the accented colour would look ok.  When I was ready, and psyched up, I began disassembling the shirts.

When I was looking into making quilts all those years ago I found one which had been made by sewing strips of material then recutting the strips into strips again so that you ended up with a strip of squares already done.

This seemed an easier option that cutting 4 inch individual squares and sewing them together so I decided that this was how I was going to do this one.

The shirt pieces were cut into 4 inch strips then pieced into piles of 6 colours.  These strips were then sewn together and finally cut into strips of squares. 

Having measured the size of the bed I needed 28 strips of 24 squares!  Phew.  As space is getting a little rare in my sewing room, I found that I could keep the strips on an airer I had.  This also helped me ‘shuffle’ the strips of squares so that I would eventually end up with a random order of colours.  I thought that as the strips were shuffled to start with and then again put together in no particular order, that the randomness of the colours would make it easy to put strips together where no squares of the same colour would meet.  How wrong could I be?

Note     Yes, I know I have been spectacularly wrong in the past, but didn’t think that this would be another example!

So now I had all 24 strips of 28 squares done, I started putting them together checking that there were no matching squares together.  This proved difficult, as I said, but fortunately not very often.

The pattern was random after all so I didn’t think that a few matching squares would matter that much.  Eventually I had a side done.

Knowing that I would now have to find a backing material I went on the hunt for something suitable.  The only flannel/fleece I had was navy blue and I knew that this wasn’t good enough – wrong colour.  I hadn’t been able to find piece of  black flannel or anything appropriate so I went back to the drawing board.

Checking my hoard stock of material, I realised that I still had quite a few shirts left.  That’s when I decided that I would start all over again and make another ‘sheet’ of squares.  There were a few shirts used on the front which I had no material left from so the front and back are not going to be exactly the same – not a problem.

So a few days later both the front and back were done and I had already found a lovely, soft blanket – from my favourite charity shop – so all I needed to do was put the whole thing together and sew it.

The weather was beautiful.  I put a sheet on the lawn then laid out the blanket.  I had decided that I would sew all the pieces together – blanket, front right side up, back right side down – then I could turn it all inside out.  This would alleviate the need to bind the edge (hate that job!!).

Well, ha ha!  As you see from the photo, the blanket was not long enough and too wide!  As the blanket was for a double bed and the quilt I was making was for a double bed, it never occurred to me to check the size.  The air was blue for a while whilst I reorganised my thoughts.  I took the quilt front upstairs and checked the size with the bed.  Again, no surprises for what I found….  Yep, the quilt was bigger than I had measured for. 

I had measured from the bottom of the pillow a few inches over the bottom and cross ways adding a few inches so it would hang over the sides too.  I worked out that I would need 672 (!!) 3½ inch squares – 28 strips of 24.  Turns out I could have just done with 26 strips.  So the blanket was big enough but I would have to trim it down along with the quilt.  Happier, I returned to the garden and finished the pinning – with safety pins!! Lol

Although I had used the electric – yes, electric – sewing machine for making the front and back, I knew that it wouldn’t be able to cope with the thickness of the blanket on top of the front and back of the quilt so Lucy was primed ready for a full day.

I cleared everything out of harm’s way and set about it.  Lucy coped admirably!  Slowly but surely, I sewed three and half sides so I could then turn the whole quilt inside out so all the right sides were on the outside.  Once this was done, I then set about top stitching around all sides, taking care to sew up the turning bit first.  Too much for one day – being in the same position for more than 6 hours (I kid you not!! Putting more hours in sewing than working… lol!)  So the quilt was packed away and Lucy put to one side, exhausted!

Hubby works on a Saturday morning so out it all came and I have now just finished sewing a couple of squares on each side a few squares in just to hold the blanket secure and not relying just on the topstitching.  I am really pleased with the result.  However it will be a long, long time before I make another quilt.  Unfortunately I still have Emma’s cushion covers to make out of the remnants of the quilt but I think I can cope with that.  Watch this space……    J

Note   No, I haven't messed up the photo - I photographed it 'skew-wiff so you can see the front and back together!