My guild makes blankets to give to the Child Advocacy Center here in town. The one in charge of the project makes fleece throws, but I don't make those anymore because of the microplastics. Plus, this is a quilt guild, so I feel like we should make quilts. I feel like flannel rag quilts are something of an in-between. They have the fringe of a fleece throw, while actually being quilts.
In the past I've made simple rag quilts from fat quarters. This time I used yardage that I already had in my stash. I had a yard of pink print and a yard of green mottled flannel that I had bought to go together, and I had a yard of purple print and a yard of purple mottled flannel that I had bought to go together. I decided to combine those two sets to make this one quilt.
From each yard of fabric, I cut 8 rectangles that were 12 inches by 14 inches. I paired the pink with the green and the purple with the purple to make my little quilt sandwiches. Then I sewed them together in this alternating pattern (all the mottled fabric is on the back of the quilt).
It makes a quilt that is only a little bigger than the ones that I've made in the past from the fat quarter (approx. 40 x 49 vs. approx. 33 x 46), but is cut from 4 yards of fabric instead of 12 fat quarter. It's more fabric for a not much bigger quilt, but I think I like the look of this design better.
Because the quilt sandwiches were pretty small, I decided to do the quilting on my regular sewing machine instead of on the long arm machine. It just seemed silly to try to pin those little rectangles into the frame. I think this would make a great quilt for a beginner. It is very simple piecing that require no precision. Plus the little quilt sandwiches are a great place to practice free-motion quilting on your regular sewing machine.
