Showing posts with label sewing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sewing. Show all posts

Sunday, March 7, 2010

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.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Quiet Book

In an attempt to (1) practice sewing techniques and (2) keep children occupied during church meetings, I remade our quiet book. Here's the completed project.
The cover is an attempt at a crazy quilt pattern.Each page has a little saying on it, which you can't really read in these photos. This one says "I am a child of God.""Jesus created the plants" and "I can be a missionary and share the gospel.""I am thankful for my food" and "I love to read the scriptures.""Sunday is a time to remember Jesus" and "Jesus created the animals."
"Jesus made the insects" and "I am thankful for my clothes."
"The Book of Mormon teaches me about Jesus" and "I am happy when I share."
"I know Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus" and "I can be brave like the pioneers and follow the prophet."
The back cover. It was a fun learning project, though it took a long time.