Hey there everyone. Tomorrow I am going into hospital to have an operation. It's very scary and I have a feeling that I will be recovering for a while; this could either mean I have loads of time to sit at my computer and blog or that I spend loads of time sleeping, either way it'll probably very erratic! Anyway I decided to make a quilt to snuggle under.
One of my favourite websites is justlittlethings.net In case you haven't read it before it's a beautiful list of all the little things which make life worth living. It is impossible to not be cheered by these words! Anyway I decided I wanted to make a quilt out of these and share it with you so you can all snuggle up in happy little things!
Plain cotton fabric for your quilt- I bought four metres at 150cm wide as I knew I would have to double it up.
Batting- this is a sheet of wadding which goes inside your quilt to make it nice and puffy and warm! Beware though, the thicker the batting the more effort it takes to sew and push through your machine. I bought 2 metres of this.
Printer transfer paper- I ended up using 25 sheets of this, I got some more to practise with first though!
An iron which allows you to turn off the steam setting.
A pencil
Paper for a pattern
A ruler
A sewing machine and tonnes of thread!!!
First cut your piece of fabric in two; a front section and a back section. You now need to mark out your squares on the front section, put the other piece aside for a while. This is quite a long and boring process. I've made a little diagram to explain what I did.
To mark out my squares I cut a piece of paper and used it as a template. It worked really well but took ages!
Next print out your patches and cut them out.
Follow the directions of your transfers to print onto your images. A little tip is to iron the fabric before adding the image not only to make it smoot but also to get it nice and hot as this will make the image stick better.
Keep going! In my diagram above I have coloured the middle squares in pink, these are the ones I printed on as I think it looks nice to have a border around the edge.
Now you need pin your printed fabric to your back piece with the printed side facing inwards. Sew three sides of your fabric (shown with the blue lines) then turn your fabric inside out and iron the seams nice and crisp.
Now cut your batting down to size put inside the case you have made. Make sure it fits really well and fits especially well into the corners. I pinned mine at the top just to make sure.
Now sew your horizontal lines making sure to keep stretching your fabric taut and pinning it taut as you go. This was the most time consuming part of the process for me but after this you're pretty much good to go!
So when you get the then you should have the last lot of squares free and some batting hanging out.
Trim the excess batting to the final line, and fold the fabric back as in you are wrapping a present.
You are looking to incase your seam at the bottom and should end up with this sort of effect from the back. Now top stitch this to secure it.
Ta-daaa! Nice and neat.
Now sew your vertical lines and you're done! Tonnes of lovely happy puffy squares! HURRAY!
Stay snuggly everyone and wish me luck for tomorrow!
Edit: this post was originally published Apr 25 2012 11:24PM
