Rag Quilt Part Deux
Hey reader!
I don't want to give you too much of a peak behind the curtain, but sometimes I write posts ahead of time. I know, I know. You have been sitting at home thinking I literally get halfway done a puppet and then don't touch it for a week. I hate to break it to you, but that's not how it usually works. I get obsessed with a project and work on it for a solid 48 hours and then have to figure out a way to break it up and make it a more manageable post.
Herein lies my new problem. I have become obsessed with rag quilts. There is something pretty zen about making them. It is the same basic task over and over which allows my mind to wander to deep thoughts like "what if all my hair was eyelashes?" or "Sure I know how cotton candy is made, but what about salt water taffy?" or even "what kind of game show do I want to host on YouTube?"
These are important thoughts that need time to be considered. Therefore, I have been drawn more and more to the repetitive work of quilting rather than the work of puppet making - which is a lot of small different tasks put together to form a puppet.
That puts me in a conundrum in that with puppets a single project can become 5 or 6 entries here, while a quilt really can only be one. Unless of course I ramble for four paragraphs before talking about what I am making.
For this quilt I wanted to go much bigger! I decided to do a queen sized quilt, which is 86x88 or 11 squares by 12 squares in this case.
There was a huge sale at the local fabric store and I bought half a yard of pretty much every fabric I thought was cool. For this blanket, I decided to do three kinds of dog fabric on the front and a checkerboard of beers and blue plaid on the back.
I started to lay the top and bottom out on my floor. I hit a small snag in that an 11 x 12 blanket means laying out 264 squares (top and bottom). I don't have that kind of floor space.
I wound up having to do a tiling affect where the squares lay on top of each other. That led me to some trouble of remembering which side was the left and right side as I progressed. Kind of a pain, but not altogether unmanageable. I sewed much smaller seams this time to try and encourage more fraying than with the baby quilt.
The snipping was painful. The increased size meant hours of snipping carefully along every edge. It took me at least half a season of something on Netflix. Again, it is a pretty systematic process so it is easy to let your mind drift to deep thoughts of ideal french fry shapes and why they don't make more fun shapes for cans of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.
Washing a quilt of this size was also a new challenge. While the last quilt made a little mess in terms of the fraying, multiplying that for the giant quilt made a lot of work for my lint trap. The last step literally required vacuuming the blanket to get all the remaining lint off. I think I washed and dried it about four times to really make sure the fraying looked right and wasn't going to keep leaving little threads everywhere.
And there it is in all its glory! It is far to hot to actually use in this weather, but some cold night with my air conditioning pumping out even more chilly air (I like it to be 65, don't judge), this blanket will be a perfect way to keep warm and to look at cute puppies!
I really like how the shorter seams created much more full frayed parts. I really njoy making these quilts so expect to see at least one more before I get totally bored - plus I have all that fun fabric that needs to find a home.
Semi-pro tip: You will always need more fabric than you think. I bought another couple yards of each fabric for this because I was short. Keep that in mind and buy extra because you never know what will be available next time you go in!
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
I don't want to give you too much of a peak behind the curtain, but sometimes I write posts ahead of time. I know, I know. You have been sitting at home thinking I literally get halfway done a puppet and then don't touch it for a week. I hate to break it to you, but that's not how it usually works. I get obsessed with a project and work on it for a solid 48 hours and then have to figure out a way to break it up and make it a more manageable post.
Herein lies my new problem. I have become obsessed with rag quilts. There is something pretty zen about making them. It is the same basic task over and over which allows my mind to wander to deep thoughts like "what if all my hair was eyelashes?" or "Sure I know how cotton candy is made, but what about salt water taffy?" or even "what kind of game show do I want to host on YouTube?"
These are important thoughts that need time to be considered. Therefore, I have been drawn more and more to the repetitive work of quilting rather than the work of puppet making - which is a lot of small different tasks put together to form a puppet.
That puts me in a conundrum in that with puppets a single project can become 5 or 6 entries here, while a quilt really can only be one. Unless of course I ramble for four paragraphs before talking about what I am making.For this quilt I wanted to go much bigger! I decided to do a queen sized quilt, which is 86x88 or 11 squares by 12 squares in this case.
There was a huge sale at the local fabric store and I bought half a yard of pretty much every fabric I thought was cool. For this blanket, I decided to do three kinds of dog fabric on the front and a checkerboard of beers and blue plaid on the back.
I started to lay the top and bottom out on my floor. I hit a small snag in that an 11 x 12 blanket means laying out 264 squares (top and bottom). I don't have that kind of floor space.
I wound up having to do a tiling affect where the squares lay on top of each other. That led me to some trouble of remembering which side was the left and right side as I progressed. Kind of a pain, but not altogether unmanageable. I sewed much smaller seams this time to try and encourage more fraying than with the baby quilt.
The snipping was painful. The increased size meant hours of snipping carefully along every edge. It took me at least half a season of something on Netflix. Again, it is a pretty systematic process so it is easy to let your mind drift to deep thoughts of ideal french fry shapes and why they don't make more fun shapes for cans of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.
Washing a quilt of this size was also a new challenge. While the last quilt made a little mess in terms of the fraying, multiplying that for the giant quilt made a lot of work for my lint trap. The last step literally required vacuuming the blanket to get all the remaining lint off. I think I washed and dried it about four times to really make sure the fraying looked right and wasn't going to keep leaving little threads everywhere.
I really like how the shorter seams created much more full frayed parts. I really njoy making these quilts so expect to see at least one more before I get totally bored - plus I have all that fun fabric that needs to find a home.
Semi-pro tip: You will always need more fabric than you think. I bought another couple yards of each fabric for this because I was short. Keep that in mind and buy extra because you never know what will be available next time you go in!
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
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