Scrappy Brown Quilt

Wow, time sure flies!  I planned to blog at least once a week, or perhaps more, but the weeks go by without stopping to tell me.  Anyway, it's been a week and a half, and I need to get posting.  Last year, when I discovered the wonderful, addicting Pinterest, I starting pinning way more projects that I could probably do in a lifetime.  But, when I need inspiration, it's so fun to go back to my boards and find a project.  Some of the ideas just stick in my head, and won't go away until I try them.  Some are successes, some epic fails!

I have a friend I follow on Pinterest, who pins tons of quilting ideas.  Now, I sew constantly, but quilting has never been my cup of tea.  I have made a couple of quilts for my daughters bed, but that's about it.  One of her pins was for a Raw Edge Layer Cake Quilt, that looked so simple and quick, I was dying to try it.

So off I went to Hobby Lobby to buy and cut my own cake layers.

Here they are all washed, pressed and cut into 10" squares.  I decided to make a crib size quilt. (to sell, I won't be needing anymore crib size quilts!)  I cut 30 squares, 5 across by 6 down, and 30 of the polka dot fabric for the back.  I have a zig zag blade for my rotary cutter, so I used that.  

Then I cut 30 9" squares of fusible quilt batting.  The idea is to fuse the quilt layers together, quilt each square, and then sew the squares together.  I wasn't too impressed with the fusible batting.  It only stuck on one side, and by the time I was done pressing it, it was pretty flat.  It fluffed up again after washing, but I'll try something different when this package is gone.  

After this step, the squares went to my mom, who loves hand sewing.  She just moved to a retirement community where the ladies meet every other week to visit and sew.  So I thought I would supply her with a project to bring!  We decided to sew 2 squares in the center of each block, a 6" and a 3" inside it.  It only took her a couple of weeks to get it done.

I then laid the squares out on the floor in a pattern I liked, and started sewing the blocks together into rows, and then the rows together.

You stitch the pieces together with the seam allowance exposed on top.  Check out the tutorial here for much better directions. It went really quick!

I followed quilt binding instructions here. It worked really well.  I machined stitched it to the front, pressed it around to the back and then sent it home with mom to hand stitch it to the back.  She finished the binding, and then snipped the seam allowances every 1/2" or so.  Then all that's left to do is throw it in the wash a few times to "rag" it up.

It turned out so cool.  I love it!

If anyone is in the market for a crib quilt, let me know.  I have one for sale!!