Rag Quilt

Yesterday I made a rag quilt for Maia… Actually it would be more accurate to say that I sewed it together yesterday. I cut out the squares some time ago but lost interest over the summer in sewing it all together (how unlike me!). So in a marathon effort that even gave me a leave pass from making dinner (excellent ploy to remember for future – sorry I cant tonight I’m up to my eyeballs in sewing which I promised Maia I’d finish today) my most excellent helper and I sewed a gazillion squares – first together (batting sandwiched between slightly larger layers of cotton and flannelette) with big crisscrosses, then in rows and finally all the rows together to form a quite lovely pink and purple, flannel backed raggy quilt.

The beauty of this type of quilt is in the imperfectness of it. I promise you there is not a perfectly uniform square in it, and the rows? They don’t exactly line up. I’m ok with that. I know there are some accomplished quilters out there (Nola I’m looking at you) that will not love this quilt. But I’m going with that its supposed to be rustic (can a quilt be rustic?) and of course if it was all perfect it wouldn’t be gorgeous and raggy!

Today its been through the wash, and flapped on the line in the cool autumn breeze for most of the morning, before heading into the dryer for a spin. Out it came, all fluffy soft and frayed and wonderfully snuggly, just asking to be crawled under and read to. Fortunately I know just the girl for such a quilt 🙂

I think this type of quilt is perfect for beginners (like me), and for those that are not that keen on getting everything perfect (truthfully I’d rather poke a needle in my eye than spend days lining up a gazillion squares and then trying to sew them all together neatly –  I can only imagine how much unpicking that would have involved).  Speaking of which I broke three needles in the one afternoon I was making this. One went through my finger so we can’t really blame that on the layers of quilt – this was slightly traumatic for both me and the 8 year old, but the other two were through pushing them and the machine too hard. If I was to attempt this again (which I may), I would buy some stronger (heavier?) needles.

Construction was pretty simple. I got the idea off the interweb, where there are some particularly helpful people who have made many of these quilts and put together lovely tutorials – like this one, this one and this one.

Aside from the cutting and sewing, a few hours last night was spent snipping all the edges to help them fray. My thumb is going to take some time to recover from all the exercise!So that’s that, would I recommend it? Yes? Will I make another??? Hmmmmmmm, we’ll see.

The weather has cooled down significantly here this week, and with it the light is fading, so I took the quilt outdoors to get some photos… supposedly just with Maia and her new quilt…

But someone else wanted in on the photo shoot 🙂

And now he wants in on a quilt too… PLEEEEAAAASSSSSEEEEE Mummy!

When I sat down at the computer tonight to send this I found a couple of other posts which I had begun which I haven’t got around to posting, so all going well I will get those finished and you will hear from me again soon, but until then I hope you are having a wonderful week friends!

J xoxoxo