I (ME) I Made a Rag Quilt!!!

Okay... I don't have kids, so let's take a moment to ooh and ahh over my furry children in all of their holiday wear cuteness!

This big guy weighs 16 pounds and was born in August of 2009...

This little girl weighs 8 pounds and was born in May of 2009 (yes BEFORE Charlie)!

I LOVE my pompoms!

Now then.... here's my Pinterest inspiration pin:

Source: quilting.about.com via Amy on Pinterest

Now honestly, my first reaction was "HEARTS! OMG THERE ARE HEARTS! I MUST MAKE THIS!" Do you see any hearts....

Ummm.. NO! That's because I was lazy after cutting out all of those honkin squares with my regular heavy duty scissors and said screw sewing hearts on these suckers! (P.S. They are more pricey but I would recommend buying spring loaded scissors for your seam snipping too.... and maybe if you can outsmart a rotary cutter using that to cut the squares. I tried and couldn't get it to cut through two layers at a time so I said screw it...)

Basically... I wanted a twin size quilt so I looked up the size of a twin size quilt online... that wasn't as easy as it sounds. I ended up going to overstock.com and looking up a twin size quilt that I could buy and then figuring out the squares.

I hacked my squares very crookedly in 8 1/2 inch squares (to do this I took a piece of printer paper and folded one corner diagonally to get a perfect square and used that as a template because I'm too cheap to buy a cutting mat). I chose five patterns initially... the dark pink was going to be the inside batting... you know, if you want a three layer warm quilt. Ended up I needed more yardage sooo... goodbye batting. I also wanted another pattern, so that ended up being needed yardage too. In the end, I bought 3 yards of the dark pink, 2 yards of both bird prints, and one yard of the two flower prints, the aqua and red dots, and the aqua and white damask. One of those I think I actually got an extra 1/4 of a yard because it was a remnant.

I wanted my quilt to be roughly 90X70... I ended up with something like 64x88 because I did 8 rows across and 11 rows up and down. I would recommend increasing it to 9 across if you want a twin size quilt. I'd say buy a total of 12 yards of flannel. AND make sure you REALLY do 1/2 inch seams, otherwise after you wash your quilt you have to go back and restitch some places that come apart :(.

P.S. If you are like me with your hack job and one side of your quilt ends up totally wonky after you sew it all together you can just cut it to be straight, then when I hemmed that side I did a back stitch over each cross seam... if that makes sense?

1. choose your patterns, cut out your squares, stack them so that you separate the patterns
2. lay them out in a pattern or whatever way you want, with so many animals I just did row by row overlapping on a friend's kitchen table, front and back same pattern- right sides facing out like a sandwich
3. sew one set to the next set side by side... continue for a whole row, throw that to the side and sew next row
4. sew all of your rows together
5. sew hem around the entire edge
6. get to snipping!
7. wash and dry... and empty the lint trap every 10-15 minutes....
8. wash and dry again to get all the linties off
9. read: http://quilting.about.com/od/quiltpatternsprojects/ig/Free-Quilt-Patterns/Easy-Rag-Quilt-Pattern.htm if I have thoroughly confused you
10. or :
    

    Source: kellyedgerton.typepad.com via Amy on Pinterest

aqua and red dot

I had to have this fabric because it closely resembles my Liberty of London scarf and wallet from Target last year...

(Okay... maybe not so much... but sorta... kinda...)

Okay... we really laughed at this print first because everything was mixed in with the nursery prints and we totally thought these were big headed babies in cages at first! They are birds I swear!

I LOVE it! AND my little pompoms and kitties too- one of them is always in my shots!

Linking up to Miss Priss's Pinterest Party!