Freya Gets Crafty with some Queenly Quilts!
Union Jack Quilt
This week’s project may seem a little ambitious, and it is true, making a quilt can take forever (I started in July.) However, much like that well-crafted essay (I have heard) it is exponentially rewarding when the fruits of your labour bloom into a good grade or a beautiful quilt. From personal experience, another benefit of such toil is an effective mechanism to get your mother off your back about watching too much TV (but I am being creative, the TV is just in the background… I am not really watching it, promise.)
For this particular project, surrounded by cold winter nights and an increasingly geriatric perspective on life with 10pm curfews and enveloped in multiple woollen cardigans, (explanation: a holiday job at jumper company) I embraced old age and set about attempting to complete my quilt in time for Christmas. Like most of my university deadlines thus far, this project too came down to the line with finishing touches still necessary on Christmas Eve, but hopefully my sister appreciated the effort.
What you will need:
- Sewing machine
- Thread
- Wadding
- Paper
- Scissors
- Lots of different coloured fabric
- Lots of time and patience!
My inspiration…
Firstly create a template out of paper of a rectangle which will constitute the base of your flag. Repeat this process to create template of wider and narrower stripes for the ‘white’ and ‘red’ of the British flag.
Carefully pin your material to the template attempting to be as efficient as possible and pin and cut out 15 rectangles out of a fabric of your choice. Repeat the process for the strips of material to make the stripes of the flag, trying not to get confused between the thin and thick strips. Next lay out your design on a flat surface and pin both the ‘white’ strips and the ‘red’ strips to your base layer. Using a wide stitch, sew along these lines for a finished and elegant look. Repeat this process for all of the 15 indidiual flags.
The next task is to attach all the various flags together. To do so, pin the right sides together of the vertical flags of your design and sew along the pinning. Undo this pinning and pin and sew the three vertical strips of flag together.
Yay, you should have completed the top layer of your quilt, congratulations!
Then cut out a piece of material that will correspond to your finished layer to provide the bottom layer of your quilt. Repeat this with the wading to create a sandwich effect with your material layer, the wadding in the middle and your flags on the top. Pin around the outside of the border.
After this, cut more material strips that are 7cm wide. Attach these strips together for the length of the edge of your quilt; this will serve as your boarder. Pin the long strip for one side of the quilt and sew along. Then fold the fabric back on itself, fold in half and hand sew along the bottom side of the quilt. Repeat this process with the other four sides.
This is where I was defeated and decided to finish, however if you are more determined, sew down the lines of the quilt in a dark colour to create a more ‘quilted effect’. Hopefully your end result should look something like the picture below.