I have a new granddaughter born March 2, Mariah Rose and decided to make her a very colorful rag quilt. I started looking for baby flannel and was quite surprised to see all the colors in flannel with baby designs. Now she can lay on the floor and play!
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I decided to make it 6 blocks wide by 7 blocks long. I cut my flannel into 5 inch squares, batting into 4 ½ squares. Assemble with the right side of 1 flannel piece down, piece of batting, 1 flannel block right side up. Secure all pieces together with pins before sewing because it will shift on you as you’re sewing. Sew blocks together by sewing an X from each corner to corner. See my tip for the day to sew the “X’s.” Sew each of these blocks together with all the seams being on top of the quilt. Then you have one side with all the seams on top, flipping it over and have a quilted look from your blocks on the back. Clip your seams to about ¼ inch from seam line about every ½ inch. This is really up to you how close you want to clip. Clip the entire quilt. I found using a small Fiskars scissors was the easiest because it didn’t hurt your fingers so much. Now the fun parts of making it look like a rag quilt! I go to a laundromat to wash my rag quilts for the 1st time. I do wash it by itself because of all the loose threads it loses. However, a nice gesture would be to clean out the wash machine before leaving so the next person doesn’t have to. I come home and dry it in my dryer which gets more loose threads. You’re finished and now to pass it on or enjoy yourself!*************
My tip for the day: I use Tiger Tape on all my rag quilts for sewing the X’s. It goes much faster than drawing a line on fabric. These tapes you can reuse over and over until it doesn’t stick on fabric any more. It sure saves a lot of time versus marking each block. There are other ways to use Tiger Tape than marking corner to corners on blocks. Be sure to check this product out.
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I’ve also made a puppy dog rag quilt for another granddaughter, Ryleigh at that time she was age of 3. This puppy quilt had big floppy ears and legs. Ryleigh used this quilt so much that I had to sew the ears and legs on it several times.
Another idea is football season is around the corner! Whether its high school, college or NFL wouldn’t it be awesome sitting in the stands watching your favorite team or player with a rag quilt. Make it your own design! Just have fun with it. So you can see that everyone “LOVES” these rag quilts. They’re soft, warm and nothing beats “coziness” under a homemade rag flannel quilt.
More to come... Have a great week sewing. Until next time bye for now
Connie
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