Sewing: Easy Beginner Quilt
For the holiday season I decided to hand make and thrift all of my families gifts. For one of my nephews he is getting a quilt for his new bedroom. I’ve made traditional quilts before which I knew with the time I had and the amount of people I’m making gifts for would take to long so instead this will be a “cheater” quilt. This just means instead of multiple pieces of fabric sewn together Im using a fabric with a quilted pattern and sew following the pattern on the fabric to make a quilted look.
Im making this quilt reversible since my nephew is at an age that is style is changing. One side is a traditional black white and grey plaid while the other is a cloudy grey washed tie dye. Both are a cotton fabric that are super soft and perfect for a blanket. If you are a visual learner here is a video of my making this quilt blanket.
Sewing Large
To add the batting between the two pieces of fabric I used batting glue. This blanket is huge at almost 6ft long and while sewing i need to make sure nothing shifts. Batting glue helps keep everything in place while I sew all of the layers together. My batting is a polyfill in a twin size. You can always use multiple pieces of batting glued together if you need. I wanted to sew horizontal and vertical lines to create the quilted look. It took me over 9 hours of sewing straight lines just to finish the length of the blanket. You can see the sewn lines better on the cloudy side then you can on the plaid. For that reason I wanted to do a more modern quilted design. I did every line for the length of the blanket but for the width I decided on groups of lines equally spaced to give a fun and fresh feeling.
A little Bias
Once the two fabric pieces and batting were sewn together I needed to make a very very long strip of bias tape to wrap around the blankets raw edges. I could have used any color for the trim but I liked the idea of keeping this neutral to match whatever style he wants his bedroom. I used a yard of black fabric and made a whole lot more bias then I needed but since its a solid black I know I can use this on future projects. To make bias you cut the fabric sideways with the stretch of the fabric and then sew all the of the strips together on a diagonal. The strips were cut two inches wide to give enough room for the bias to fold over the blanket and for the raw edge of the bias to be folded in as well.
This cheater quilt took me three days of multiple hours each day of sewing to complete which sounds like a lot but for an almost 6 foot long blanket if I had done a traditional quilting technique with little sewn together pieces it would have taken me three if not four times as long. The blanket is not thick by design. My nephew lives in the south so their winters are mild and the summer quite warm and I want this blanket to feel comfy not smothering when he uses it. I also made it long enough to look good draped over a queen size bed.
