Living life in the carpool lane..

Rag Quilt – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

With all the sandwiches done, all that’s left to do is put the quilt together.  I have to admit, it was scary.

I was worried that things wouldn’t line up properly.  I was worried the squares won’t look like squares once everything was said and done.  I was worried that putting it all together was going to much harder than I anticipated.  Everything else seemed to go fairly smoothly, I was sure that these final steps were going to be a disaster…

But then again, this was my first time making any sort of quilt.  I was going to allow myself imperfections.  I was going to consider these all lessons to be learned.

First, the squares have to be arranged in the order they will be sewn together.  I had to do this on the floor because I have no table space big enough.  Hubby took M out to play in the neighborhood, so I took advantage of the free floor to do it.

You can see I did 5 squares across and 6 squares down.  There was no systematic way of arranging them.  I just made sure none of the same patterns were directly next to each other, and it was just pleasing to my eye.

Then, I sewed them together, row by row, with a 1in seam allowance to allow for a seam big enough for ragging.  I numbered the rows with the left square on the top..

Once the rows were done, it was time to piece them all together.  It took a lot of pins and a lot of patience.  I definitely feel like a walking foot would help putting this together because there were times that I felt things were shifting because of the way they were feeding through the machine.  Still, I made it work with what I had..

I flattened the seams when I was sewing the rows together.  I’ve seen other videos where they nest the seams.  I’m assuming it’s just whatever your preference is.  The edges are going to get cut up in the ragging process anyway, the way the seams were sewn together probably doesn’t matter all that much in the end.

After all the rows had been sewn together, I took the  quilt and topstitched a 1in seam aorund the entire quilt’s edge.  That was the end of all the sewing!

Here’s a view of the back and the front of the quilt before I started cutting up the edges.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be…

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Rag Quilt – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

After cutting all the batting and all the fabric, the next step is to create sandwiches and sew them together.

A sandwich is two pieces of fabric with the batting in the middle, making sure the “right” side of the fabric is facing outward.

In the case of my solid colored fabric, it didn’t matter what sides were facing out.  In my printed fabrics, I had to make sure the printed sides were out AND in the same orientation.

Once the sandwiches are assembled, I pinned them on the corners and the middle to make sure nothing shifted too bad during the sewing process.

Take it to the sewing machine and sew a big X down the middle.  As you can see in the photo, I didn’t start at the edge of the fabric.  I estimated an inch in from each corner before sewing.  In hindsight, I think I will start a little closer to the edge, still not all the way to the edge, but just closer.  At first my sandwiches looked a little rough.  It was my first time, so I expected it not to be perfect.  But by the time I finished all 30 squares, my sandwiches looked pretty decent.  Practice does make perfect.

Some of my squares didn’t lay on top of each other perfectly, but I figured it was ok.  The edges were going to be “ragged” at the end of all this sewing, so that would hide a lot of the imperfections during my cutting of the fabric.

Halfway through sewing all the sandwiches together.

Here are all 30 completed sandwiches.  Once I got the hang of it, this process went by pretty quickly.  It took me about two days to do this since I had to squeeze in the time between naps and stuff.

Progress on this quilt has been quicker and easier than I initially anticipated and I’m loving every bit of it!

The next step is to arrange the quilt and to start putting it all together!

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Rag Quilt – Part 1, Part 2

After getting all the fabric cut to size, the next step was to cut the batting.

The instructions said to cut the batting into 7in squares.

I have to say, this wasn’t my favorite step at all.  My cutting space is limited to the fact that I have a small cutting board.  Folding up batting to cut isn’t easy.  Batting is bulky and fluffy and just hard to work with on a small space.

I ended up just cutting the full sheet (45in x 60in) in half and cutting it with scissors into manageable strips before I used my ruler and rotary cutter.

It wasn’t easy, but I cut 30 of those 7in squares.

It took me about two nights to do this since it took awhile to figure out how to manage it the first night.  Once I figured it out, it went pretty fast.

Next is to assemble the “sandwhiches” and sew them together…

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