First Finish of 2016 and A Short Tutorial

That's right, I have one finish so far. 

 I finished that rag quilt that I was making with vintage sheets.

This is a photo of the finished front.

And this is a photo of the finished back.

If you have not made a rag style quilt before you should.  

They are super easy and make great baby quilts!  

I think having one for a winter snuggle would be great too.  

They make good blankets to take to cold football games too.  

I had tons of batting scraps I wanted out of my closet so this is what I chose to do with them.

  I cut them into 4" squares.  

You, of course can cut them any size you like.  

I wanted to use 5" charm squares of my vintage sheets.  

You need your batting square to be 1" smaller than the fabric you are using.  

First thing to do is sandwich you batting between the 2 wrong sides of the fabric you are using.  

If your squares are larger than 5" you may want to spray baste them to avoid slippage.  

I also use my walking foot to make this quilt.  Stitch an "X" on each sandwich.

Here you can see mine all stacked up with the "X" stitched on them.  

You may chain piece this part.

That sure makes it go more quickly!

It is easiest to use your walking foot to assemble the quilt too. 

Once you have all the "X"'s sewn on the squares you sew them together like you see here.
I used 1/2" seams to sew everything together.

One side of the quilt will have all the seams up as you see in this photo.

The back side of the rows will look like this, more like a typical quilt looks

Once you have sewn your rows, then sew them together, matching the intersections as you do.

You are now ready to do the very tedious part, snipping all the upturned seams. 

 I use a spring loaded, short bladed scissors to help my hands out a little bit. 

Here is a link to the exact ones I use

 It is good to do while watching TV as it is pretty mindless. 

 Make sure you snip about 3/8" apart. 

 A little smaller or larger is no biggie, the only big no no is not to snip into the sewn seam!  

Then your quilt would come apart! 

 If you do that (and I think we all know most of us will at some point) 

take it back to your machine and stitch it back up a bit. 

 If you are not near the machine put a piece of painters tape on the spot 

so you can find it when you are.  

I would say a pin, but I always seem to lose them and then I have 

A) lost my pin and 

                  B) don't know where to stitch!

Both are not good!. 

 Don't forget you need to sew all the way around the outside of the quilt and snip that line too!!!  

Close up of my snipped quilt.  Isn't that bird adorable?

I also loved those butterflies!

It is a technique that can be used with quilting cotton or flannel.  

Flannel makes one HEAVY quilt, but so nice for winter.  

One you have the entire quilt snipped you will throw it into the washer and then the dryer. 

 It will fray/fuzz a bit more when you do and that's exactly what you want it to do. 

 I find that the more snipping, the better the fuzzing, 

so keep that in mind for the look you are going for.  

This is the first time I have used vintage sheets and 

they did not fuzz as much as regular fabric or flannel, but I like it just as much!

I hope you have enjoyed my little tutorial and that you decide to give this technique a try.  

If you do I would love to see your pictures!

Have a wonderful day!

Linking to Finish along here
See my original list here

~XOP~