Baby quilt

I made a baby quilt the other day, and after making several of this style, I think I have the correct dimensions now. This is a typical rag-style quilt, except I do stripes instead of blocks and I add a blanket binding around the edge since that's all my children really like about their blankets anyway.


For this quilt, I used four differently patterned fabrics (flannels), which I will call A, B, C, and D. I bought the following amounts of each fabric:
A=1 yard
B=20 inches
C=20 inches
D=20 inches
I washed, dried, and ironed the flannel. Then I re-folded the fabric in half and cut 5-inch wide strips of B, C, and D using my nice 5-inch wide ruler and a rotary cutter.

The A color was cut into four 6-1/2 inch strips and two 5-inch strips. In total, I had 6 strips of the A fabric and 4 of each of B, C, and D. I matched the fronts and backs of the strips of flannel together like you do for a rag quilt, but omitted any batting. I think the batting can make these blankets too heavy.

I used my nifty walking foot and guides (set at 2-1/2 inches) to get a pretty-near-perfectly-stitched straight line down the center of each strip--except for the two wider A strips, where I stitched the seam 2-1/2 inches from on side.

Then I arranged the strips in the pattern A-B-C-D-A-D-C-B-A and sewed them together. The two wider A strips were used at each end, sewn so the wider edge was toward the outside edges of the quilt. I started from the "top" of the quilt each time I sewed a strip on so that one end was all nicely matched and straight. The other end was "raggedy" since the strips weren't all the same length.

I trimmed off everything on the raggedy side and then sewed the ribbon binding around the edge. I used one package of binding ribbon and had a few inches left over. It is a 2-inch ribbon, so that when it is sewn on the quilt, it covers the outer 2 inches of the larger A strips; all the strips appear to be the same width.

I cut the seams and washed the quilt. Then I gave the quilt away.

The quilt took about 2 hours of ironing and sewing and an hour of clipping.