Adventures in rag quilting.

So I've been wanting to dabble in quilting for awhile, but the time and thought put into making a quilt is quite daunting.. so I've recently rediscovered rag quilting! What I consider my crawling step, I've already made a few mistakes that I can take with me when I actually do start quilting (whenever that is hah!) And I say rediscovered; because when I first got my sewing machine I went blanket crazy and sewed a bunch of rag quilt blanket animals. Sadly, this was before I started taking pictures of things so I only have two photos to share. 

My rag quilt puppy. It's a Simplicity pattern. 

My favorite lap quilt. Rag quilt NEMO! :)

For some reason, it never occurred to me that it could be an actual normal blanket shape, until I saw one that my friend, Kevin, had. And THEN I went a-googling and it was all downhill from there. Haha. Actually I've only made one so far, but it's so much fun I'm sure I'll be making more. 

Here's the blanket before the washer and dryer. 

Here it is after.

So. The blogs that I've read all say that flannel is the best for rag quilting. So naturally I went with the flannel. And yes it does fray well. And yes it is nice and soft. But nobody mentioned that

a. It frays CRAZY well.  I washed it three times already and it still has thread and lint coming off of it like a mother. 

b. It shrinks. Okay, obviously cotton shrinks but I mean, like I said above, I already washed it three times so it shrank about maybe 80% already. 

I mean, the puppy blanket is just cotton, and the clownfish is fleece.. so this is my first time working with flannel. First and possibly last. :)

Pin It