Breagha's RAG QUILT

Just completed quilt #14 for my two and a half year old grandaughter.  For some people, that would indicate an excessive number of quilts.   It really isn't when you consider how often these quilts require washing and the fact that there is always one or two on her little bed. 

I ordered the fat quarter bundle from Connecting Threads called "Wild Ones".  They were on sale at a great price so I ordered additional yardage as well.  Bear in mind, this line is flannel, the one medium I don't care to work with, but my daughter loves it and I am beginning to suspect that my grandaughter will too. 

This is the first time I have tried the rag quilt pattern although it seems there is a rag quilt on almost every quilting blog out there.  Looked at numerous tutorials but finally decided the one method I liked best was this one:

http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.ca/2012/02/crazy-mom-quilts-one-way-to-make.html

Amanda Jean is awesome when it comes to tutorials of any kind.  I love how she encourages you to always "make it your own".  As you know, what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for everyone. 

The changes that I made were changes that worked best for me.  Little things that made a big difference. For one thing, I used fusible cotton batting rather than just plain batting.  I can't begin to tell you what a difference it made in keeping those squares together.  Perhaps a little more work as you have to iron them together but definitely worth it.  Amanda used her walking foot to quilt an X, I wanted to practice my stipple quilting so I went wild on all these 5 inch sandwiches.  Other than that, I followed her instructions completely.

I also got a tad creative in photographing this quilt, something I normally don't do.....but I wanted to email these photographs to my daughter, just to see her reaction and of course, it was the reaction I had hoped for, she loved it and emailed me back to let me know that she was keeping this quilt for herself!!!!

After photographing this quilt, I spent the evening worrying about the fact that a rag quilt does not call for a binding.  I worried that the constant pulling on the edges, with the weight of all that flannel, would cause too much strain so I decided to attempt a binding.  Off to Fabricland I went and bought a plain pink flannel meter of fabric, came home, sewed the binding and found it easier than I expected.  Used my walking foot and it travelled over the joins easily. 

And here it is, binding completed.  I am so glad that I did this as it just gives added strength to the quilt.  The thing that I especially like about this pattern is that you can change up the sizing of the quilt so easily just by adding more blocks.  The pattern called for 150 blocks but I made 195 because I wanted it large enough to fit Breagha's Big Girl Bed that she just moved into. 

This is the back of the quilt.  As we all know, fabric is expensive and a person always has scraps from past projects.  The three different fabrics you see on this backing came from flannels that I had used in Breagha's other quilts.  I had all these pieces of flannel, not enough to do anything with, but too much to throw away.  I used every bit of all the leftovers in making this rag quilt and loved that they got used up.  When I was doing the layout for the front of the rag quilt, I had made up my mind that I would not think about how the back was going to look.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the random backing actually turned out as well as it did. 

This quilt is heavily stippled with machine quilting but I have to admit, it is so soft and the flannel gives it such weight that I am seriously considering making another flannel rag quilt. 

So, that's another quilt for my beloved grandaughter and another entry into the blog that I know she will read one day.