Simple Spring Quilt!
Now that the sun finally seems to be (hesitantly) emerging, I thought I would share with all you lovely Her Campus readers how to make this flower quilt. This particular quilt is especially close to my heart, as it was the first quilt that I ever made. As some of you may know, the Duke of Edinburgh Award requires the participant to engage in a ‘skills’ section. Unfortunately I was not a very skilled seventeen year old. I was the only girl rejected from the ‘open to everyone’ senior choir and never was never endowed with a speaking role in the plethora of compulsory school plays, with parts as interesting and stimulating as Villager 12 in Robin Hood and a Hieroglyph in a production of Tutankhamun (don’t ask). My only success in art was when the teacher was so exasperated that they felt enough pity to draw the object in question on my behalf. Ultimately I was forced to look out of school for an activity, and was able to use my mum’s sewing machine to create this quilt, and eventually pass my Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Things that you need:
- Wadding
- Fabric
- Scissors
- Pins
- Sewing machine
- Thread
- Paper backed Iron-on fusible web interface (to keep design in place)
Firstly cut out paper stencils of all the elements of the flower: the leaves, stem, petals and centre. Take particular care when cutting out the stem as it is easy to get confused about which way round it should be. Next choose your fabric for the flowers and using the stencils cut out the flowers. I chose to use fabrics which all had flowers on them for the petals, and used the same green for all the stems in an attempt to tie the colours of the quilt together. Do the same with the fusible web interface.
The next step is to cut out rectangles for the ‘canvas’ background for your flower. Pin the gauze like material and then your fabric in a flower pattern, and then iron on. The next step is to sew around the outline of the fabric, using a wider strip for a more visible effect. Repeat this process for all the different flowers.
Then cut out and make strips for the navy ‘boarder’ between your flowers. Pin, attach and sew these strips to the white ‘canvas’, until you have your front ‘cover.’ Put the quilt together by creating a sandwich layer of your backing fabric, wadding and top layer together. Sew around the edges of the ‘canvas’ to ensure that the quilt stays together. Finally cut out and sew together strips for your boarder. Pin along your quilt and sew along one side, fold over and hand sew the other edge of your quilt.