I’ve learned so much from my Mom, mostly about how to be a strong woman. But one of my favorite things I learned from her is the Art of Crafting – yes, I am capitalizing those words. When I was young we would sit at the kitchen table and craft. We would color, finger paint, and bake. As my motor skills increased she taught me how to cross stitch and sew. Most recently she’s been trying to teach me how to knit – I failed miserably at crochet so we moved on to knitting. My Mom used to make most of my clothes and Halloween costumes. I had tons of smocked dresses and baby bonnets. One of the most special gifts she ever gave me was a Holly Hobby quilt. I used it as my bedspread for many years as a child. Even now, I use it when I’m watching tv and laying on the couch. By looking at the details, you’ll see the hand stitched quilting around each square. I don’t know how she had the time or patience to applique all the Holly Hobbys onto the quilt.

Recently, my Mom has switched from sewing to to knitting and crochet. She always seems to have a needle and yarn in her hands. Here’s a picture of a blanket she made for me.

The most special piece my father has ever made was the wedding gift he gave me. My husband and I only had a five-month engagement, so my Dad spent all of those months building a prayer bench for me. He even hand-carved two crucifixes. The workmanship is spectacular!

My husband and I used the prayer bench during our wedding ceremony. The bench has also been used in my cousin’s wedding and hopefully will be a cherished heirloom to be passed down from generation to generation. I don’t know how many hours Dad spent building the bench, but I can tell from the tiniest details that he put a lot of love into it. It’s made of solid oak and you can’t see a single nail or drew head. The pictures don’t do it justice; it really is a work of art.

Here are a few close-up pictures of the crucifixes.

On a side note…my Mom crocheted the throw to cover the kneeler pillows and Dad even hand-sewed the pillows.

I love the look of quilts, but have been too intimidated to try anything more than a T-shirt quilt. But my husband’s birthday is coming up and his ratty, old blanket needs to go. Making a new quilt for him may be the perfect excuse to get rid of that ugly thing. I didn’t have a lot of time to make a quilt, nor did I have the patience to make something elaborate. Let’s face it; he’s probably just going to spill red wine on it anyway. So I set out to make something very simple.

Follow along as I make this easy quilt.

Anyone with a sewing machine can make this. If you are new to quilting, this is the perfect quilt pattern to start with. First, you need to figure out how big you want your quilt to be. I wanted to make a full size quilt, which is around 80 inches wide by 88 inches long. This quilt is not really for a bed, so I didn’t need to take exact mattress size into account. A full size quilt needs 10 yards of fabric (5 for the front and 5 for the back). It’s a good idea to take ofyour measurements and draw out a sketch of the quilt before you buy your fabric. Be sure you calculate your seam allowances. I’m pretty budget-consious, so every little scrap of fabric counts.

My husband doesn’t like anything fancy and mostly wanted solid colors. We sat down at the computer and picked out several patterned fabrics and several solid fabrics in the brown color palette (yep, that’s right, my husband helped pick out the fabrics for his quilt). I bought all my fabrics from Fat Quarter Shop. It’s my new favorite place to buy cotton fabric. We bought ½ yard of each color (10 different fabrics) for the front of the quilt and 5 yards of one color for the back. To keep the quilt aesthetically pleasing, we chose 5 solid colors and 5 patterned fabrics for the front and a single, solid color for the back.

I decided the easiest quilt to sew would be rows of squares. Not little squares, but big 8″ x 8″ squares. Not trusting myself to keep the squares perfect, I made a plastic template to trace. It took a while, but I finally finished cutting out the 111 squares and it was time to position each square. My husband can be a little “particular” about some things, so he helped me place the squares where he wanted them to go. This quilt has 11 rows with 10 squares in each row. To keep the rows in order I numbered the first square in each row with masking tape and safety pinned each square to it thereafter, moving from left to right. When I was finished, I had 11 stacks of squares all safety-pinned together with the numbered square at the top of each stack.

Now that the organizing process is over, it’s time to start sewing! I used a 1/4″ seam allowance to sew the squares together.

Now that the front of your quilt is made, it’s time to put it all together. Large-width fabrics are available for quilt backs, but they can sometimes be pricey, so I just bought standard 44″ wide fabric for the backing. If you bought 5 yards of fabric, you’ll have to cut it in half, lengthwise. You should now have two pieces of fabric that are approximately 2½ yards x 44″. Sew the two pieces together and the quilt backing should now be 88″ wide at the top by 90″ in length down the sides. You’ll also need to buy some quilt batting to sew between the two pieces of fabric. This adds the “fluff” to the fabric and gives it that quilted feel. I like the natural feel of cotton, so I found a polycotton batting with 80% cotton and only 20% polyester. Make sure you buy the correct size of batting for your quilt size.

The easiest way to put the three quilt pieces together is to have a HUGE table upon which to lay the fabric. But, if you’re like me and don’t have a table that comes anywhere close to being big enough, laying the quilt on a hardwood floor seems to work best (albeit a little painful on the knees). First, lay your quilt backing on the floor and make sure it is wrong-side-up. Tape the fabric to the floor with masking tape. Second, lay your quilt batting over the backing. You may have to tape the batting to the floor too. The batting works best if it is 2″ shorter than the backing along all four sides. Now it’s time to lay the quilt top over the batting, right-side-up. The easiest way to keep all three pieces together during the sewing process is to baste with safety pins. This is the physically demanding part; you have to secure a safety pin into your quilt every 4″. I ran out of pins, so I think I ended up pinning every 6″.

Now that you’ve pin-basted your quilt pieces together, it’s time to sew!

I wanted this to be a “no-frills” quilt, so I only quilted around each square on every other row. Starting with the first row, I “stitched in the ditch” along the seam lines, lengthwise. After each row was stitched, I went back and stitched in between each square on every other row. Stiching in the ditch means you sew right over the seam line. If you sew it correctly, you won’t be able to see any of the stitching lines. It’s pretty hard to do at first, but after you finish this quilt you’ll be a pro!

Below is a picture of the back of the quilt. You can see that the squares of every other row are quilted. Oddly enough, it has the illusion of being sticthed every square.

Now that your quilt is all sewn together, you can sew the quilt binding around the edges.

I chose a dark brown color to complement all the different shades of brown. You can buy quilt binding online or at your local sewing store. I used a double-fold 1″ quilt binding. Wrights has a great tutorial to teach you how to sew the binding on to your quilt.

Here is the finished quilt. I think it turned out very well. Truthfully, it’s better than I expected. My husband was so excited about his quilt that he took all of these pictures and beat me to a blog post.

I’ve been so enamored with this “Simple & Easy Quilting” idea that I might have to make a quilt for me…stripes perhaps? At some point, I will try “true” quilting, but in the meantime this will have to do.

Happy Quilting! Let me know if you have any questions.

Anyway… check out my progress through this challenge by clicking on my other blog entries here, here, here, and here. If you want to buy these bags but want them in a different color pallet contact me and we’ll see what we can come up with.

More pictures after the fold.

Happy Tape

Cute Tape

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