Tuesday 4 March 2014

My first quilt.

It's finished! I can cross off my my new years resolution of sewing a quilt off the list. First step was finding some pretty materials for my quilt. I wanted it to be grey, yellow and white but after much searching for patterned grey material, the quilt has ended up being more yellow than grey. I also purchased a piece of grey felt and a sheet of yellow felt. I was able to thrift the plain yellow and yellow gingham print and bought some the plain grey and white fabric and the scallop and chevron yellow material. I purchased a metre of each and have leftovers for other projects. I received some grey printed material for the edging, reused the plain grey for the bias binding and purchased some grey and white patterned material for the back. I also needed to purchase some wool batting for the inside of the quilt.
Once the squares were cut (20cm x 20cm) I lay them out to work out the best order for the fabrics. I initially had decided to make the quilt 4 by 4 but ended up making it 4x5 as it was a more appropriate cot size.On the plain white squares (there were 3), I cut out elephant shapes in grey felt with yellow ears and hand sewed them onto the white. I just drew my own elephant shape as a template and choose an elephant as they are one of the easiest animals to draw (a trunk and giant ears make them pretty distinguishable).

To put the quilt together I sewed the rows of  5 together and then sewed the 4 rows together. As I am quite inexperienced with sewing, it's not perfect but I still like it a lot and the little flaws prove that I made it! 
I then cut four pieces for the border and sewed these round the edge. Once this was done, I cut my grey and white backing material to size and made a sandwich with the quilt front, batting in the middle and backing material. A lovely family friend helped me through these steps and with using a quilting foot to make diagonal lines across the front squares (except for the squares with the elephants on the front).
Then I cut the grey material to size to make the bias binding and sewed it around the edge. Once I had attached one side, I then folded it over and hand stitched the other side. Then it was finished! *This whole process also involved A LOT of ironing.



Isn't it cute? I just love bubs new quilt. As I get more and more confident with my quilting, I'll share more detailed instructions and process steps but I am still unsure if I'm getting all the steps right myself. Whatever I did though, I am so pleased with the end product, it's just so cute! And matches the wonky little cushion I first sewed...
I'm getting addicted to sewing and still have some of the material left over so I've already started on another quilt. This one is a bit more adventurous though so I may take a lot longer to complete it.
Lisa x
P.S I'm linking up with

3 comments:

  1. I love your choice of yellow and gray and the patterns. Great job putting a quilt together in record time for a first go. Your memory box is such a great idea in the previous post.

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  2. What an adorable quilt! You did a great job. I tried making a quilt once and it was a complete fail,ha.
    Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment on my laundry room post.

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  3. So glad you kept to your new years resolution and ended up with an adorable quilt I made one quilt, only one, I made the mistake of starting with a quilt that had over 200 pieces. It did me in and I never attempted another one. I should of started smaller. Thanks for sharing at Sunday's Best, and hope to see you again this Sunday!

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