Day 2: Rag Quilt

So yesterday I might have told a little lie.  

It wasn't really yesterday, it was sometime early last week when I seemingly had some time on my hands before the holiday last minute chaos of baking, final wrapping, grocery shopping and cooking.  I had really hoped when I wrote that post that I would have been writing the 12 Gifts posts in advance and just scheduling them to post each day.  Well, that was all good in theory, but truth be told, yesterday's post was the only one I had ready to go before Christmas.

So now I will be flying by the seat of my pants and writing these up each day while the three boys are home on break from school and the house needs to be undecorated and post-holiday parties need to be attended (like yesterday and tomorrow night's) and hockey tournaments need to be played and watched.  Ahhhhh {deep exhale}.  I promise I will do my best!

Now for Day 2: A Rag Quilt

 It had been a long time since I used my sewing machine for actual fabric, and forever and a day since I had made a quilt.  But this is kind of a "cheater quilt."  I won't lie and tell you that it went together quickly.  It didn't (but as quilts go, you can't get much faster than this.).  I will say that I loved making this quilt and will definitely be making others.  Why?  Because it's not difficult, there is no quilting through several layers of fabric, it's all done by machine, and my favorite part: there's NO binding!!  Oh happy day.  I loathe binding quilts, um probably because I never really learned the proper way to do it.

On with the how to.  Click here to be brought to Jera's fantastic tutorial for creating a rag quilt.

I used 1/2 yard cuts of flannel shirting and cut them to 6" square.  I am guessing that I used a yard of 6 different fabrics to create a quilt about the size of a crib (but please don't quote me on that, my math for fabric measuring isn't very good as is evident by the fact that I had to return to the fabric store to buy more fabric and also had to scrounge in my stash for some scraps of flannel.  My sandwiches were three layers of flannel with the front and back being identical patterns.  Somewhere I had read to avoid any kind of polyester-type fabrics (ie. felt, fleece, poly batting) because it does not fray well/at all.

You can't tell from the photo below, but I made my snips about every 1/4" to 1/2" (wish I had taken a photo of that).  The washer and dryer worked its magic to create this fabulous fringe look:

This blanket is soft and snuggly and perfect for my nephew to curl up with in front of a movie.

See you in a few hours for Day 3!