Creating a Rag Quilt Step 5

Cut and wash quilt

Ok now that its all sewed together you need to start cutting it up.  I learned by my own mistake when handing my son a pair of scissors to start helping cut.  You need to make sure that your relay careful when cutting to not cut the seams or it will all come lose.  After an hour of watching a movie and cutting my son went to get snacks when i picked up the quilt and realised my quilt now had 20 or so holes all over where he cut generously through the stitching.  After acting badly, jumping up and down screaming and my wife calming me down.  I went to work repairing the quilt.  Dont make this mistake yourself its a bumer.  The 2nd and 3rd rag quit needless to say did not have this issue.  Live and learn they all say.  Ok a movie or 2 later and the quilt will be cut up (with out holes we hope) oh as a after thought make sure you repair any oopsies.

Now to wash your quilt this will bring out the frays you want.  I have found that it takes 2-3 washes to get what I feel is a ok fray.  The image to the left is after the first wash but before they dry.  Back to the cutting I forgot something here I said to cut, not too much but not how to cut.  you should cut 1/4 inch apart about 1/4 inch deep or so.  Me I tend to cut too much and my wife cuts too little.  Ok back to washing.  When you wash and dry your quilt many many peices of threads are going to go every where.  Some say to take to a laundry mat and wash me I have a nice frout loading heavy duty machine so I do mine at home.  The first wash depending on the size of the quilt you may want to stop half way through and clean out the lint when its drying.  For sure you will want to cean it out after every wash.  Any way now your the proud owner of a rag quilt.

Creating a Rag Quilt Step 4

Sewing Blocks together
After your squares are pinned together its now time to sew the blocks. You will want to quilt a x across the quilt to hold your 2 layers of material and batting together.  When doing blocks like this, a walking foot is very helpful to keep the bottom and top of block moving together.  When sewing you make a  chain it will save you alot of time and effort and a little thread not cutting and starting over and over.  On the left you can see my string of blocks making a cute pile on the floor.  Sew the first half of all the X's and then sew the second half of the X.  Once you get all of this sewing done you are ready for the next step, sorting and organizing the pattern you want for your quilt.  Next time we will talk about sewing the rows together into a finalized quilt.  This process can go quickly or slow depending on the size and number of the squares that you are putting together.
Sew Rows together

Now to sew the rows together.  Or as Jared my youngest would say "make conveyer belts".  This is his favorite part of the process.  I row by row sew the blocks together and then sew the rows one to another.  this is a long process, but quite fun.  The bigest issue I find is the weight of the blanket pulling away as I try to sew it.  I have found that geting more of the blanket on the table and less hanging off the table to help in the sewing.  Any way happy sewing all.

Creating a Rag Quilt Step 3

Cutting up the blocks

Step one of any quilting project is cutting out pieces.  In a rag quilt you need to cut out the back and the front of the quilt.  In the picture on the left you can see the blocks and the batting.  I used 6 inch squares for my rag quilt and my batting blocks were 5 inch square.  After cutting up all of the blocks you need to pin them together.  This process is similar to making a sandwich.  Put your bottom piece down nice side down.  Then put the batting in the middle.  Then put your top piece on.  Once you have your 3 layers you need to pin them into place, so that you can quilt the x across the center of the block.  Depending on the size of the quilt this could be a big process.  The blue and brown quilt I made had 260 squares in quilt, 20 in pillow case, and 2 pillows each of 9 squares for a total of 298 blocks. So plan ahead to make sure you have the amount of items needed for the size of quilt your making.

Creating a Rag Quilt Step 2

Shopping and Sizing material for the quilt.

James Healey

OK we need to pick the materials needed for our quilt. My first rag quilt was made for my son James.  He chose blue and brown as his colors.  My wife and I then headed off to the fabric store and bought 2 yards each of 2 blue and 2 brown fabrics.  I am useless for picking color, so left that all up to the wife.  We chose cotton fabrics for the top and a flannel for the back.  We had a single color for the back and bought 8 yards.  Any one that has done quilting long, may note that we had too much material but better safe then sorry and since I was sorry on the first few things I tried to do I opted for safe.  Oh one last thing we also needed batting.  We chose to do 6 inch blocks with a 1/2 inch seam for a total of 5 inches of finished blocks.  My original plan was to do 15 x 20 blocks (or 300 total) we ended up doing only 13 by 20 after sewing the first 13 rows together we tried it on my sons bed and its over lap was even more then i guessed so flipped the quilt on its side and sewed on 5 more rows of 13 rather then the 7 more rows of 15 I had intended to do.  With the 40 left over squares I made 2 matching 3x3 square pillows and a 4x5 row pillow case.  All in all the project was better then I had expected.  Through out the whole process I took a lot of pictures and will show them off here in the blog.

Creating a Rag Quilt Step 1

To create a rag quilt you must first know what a rag quilt is.  A rag quilt is similar to a patchwork quilt that you make without quilt frames, the old fashion quilting process.  But it is assembled differently.  You create single blocks and connect them together and Quilt them as single blocks and then you connect them together.  Wash and dry to fray and your done.  Your saying to yourself what fray my brand new quilt? Yes you fray a rag quilt to give it that special look of the seams.  Over the next few weeks I will go though that full process. Giving both pictures and explanations as to how this is done from beginning to end.  It is a fun project that you can easily get your kids interested in helping you out with.