A Quilt in a Day

Tags

making a quilt, making a quilt in a day, mother daughter bonding, pink flannel, popsicle flannel, quilt blocks, quilt squares, sewing project, turquoise flannel

One day this week (Wednesday or Thursday), Daughter asked, “Mom, what are you doing Saturday?” As I had nothing specific planned, I said, “Not much. Why?” Her response, “Wanna make a quilt? We can do some mother/daughter bonding.”

As she has spent much of the summer (and her senior year in high school, come to think) on friend-related activities and is due to head to college this week, a mother/daughter bonding day over fiber sounded like a good idea.

I wasn’t sure we could complete a quilt in a day, but Daughter was determined. She had an easy quilt pattern picked out, one that called for flannel squares and allowed for the selvage edges to be showing as part of the design. She had also done all of the math required to determine how much fabric we needed. (77 – 7-inch squares)

We went to a fabric store Thursday evening and she purchased two flannels – a dark turquoise solid and a light turquoise with a Popsicle pattern. When we got home that night, she was eager to get started. She was ready to start cutting out individual squares with a scissor, but if we were going to get this baby done in a day, we had to work more efficiently. I got out my rotary cutter, self-healing cutting pad, and plastic cutting guide and showed her how to cut the fabric into strips, which could then be cut down into squares.

We cut seven-inch strips out of both fabrics between Thursday and Friday night. Here’s what we started with on Saturday morning:

Flannel cut into strips for a quilt, August 28, 2010

After cutting these strips, Daughter noticed that the selvage edges on the Popsicle fabric had large, white printer’s marks that had to be cut off. This meant we wouldn’t have enough fabric for all the quilt squares. Daughter decided the quilt could use a border, so she purchased some pink flannel. With this extra fabric and scraps from the other fabrics, we created two special squares.

Me, cutting quilt squares, August 28, 2010.

I set to work cutting squares from the turquoise and Popsicle fabrics, while Daughter put together the two special squares.

Daughter working on the special quilt squares, August 28, 2010.

Artistic view of the turquoise squares, photo by Daughter, Aug. 28, 2010.

Artistic view of the Popsicle squares, photo by Daughter, Aug. 28, 2010.

Once the squares were all cut, a Popsicle one had to be attached to a turquoise one by means of a sewn “X.” Daughter pinned, marked and sewed squares while I decorated the special squares.

Quilt squares being sewn together with an "X," August 28, 2010.

Special quilt square #1, August 28, 2010.

Special quilt square #2, August 28, 2010.

After I finished embroidering the special squares, I helped Daughter with the pinning and marking and the job sped up considerably. Soon, we had this:

Piles of quilt squares, Aug. 28, 2010.

Daughter wanted the quilt squares to alternate, turquoise – Popsicle – turquoise – Popsicle, so she laid them out in order. From there, we pinned and sewed.

Laying out the quilt squares, Aug. 28, 2010.

The first row of quilt squares is sewn! (Daughter is purposely mugging for the camera.) Aug. 28, 2010

After the squares were sewn into strips, we had to sew the strips together. This was a test in the consistency of our sewing. If the squares didn’t line up with each other side-to-side, that would mean our sewing was inconsistent and the quilt would look wonky. Fortunately, even though we were sharing the sewing duties, the squares lined up pretty well.

Daughter sewing strips together, Aug. 28, 2010.

We then added the pink border, with a little woggling by me in order to get nice corners. (I haven’t done enough quilting to create successful mitered corners yet. Maybe someday.) By the time we were done, it was 10:00 and we were pooped. We did, however, finish a quilt in a day. The result:

Front of Daughter's quilt, Aug. 28, 2010.

Back of Daughter's quilt. Note the two pink squares near the bottom, which are backing the special squares on the front. Aug. 28, 2010

Special squares up close on the finished quilt, Aug. 28, 2010.

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