What I did with "Mistakes"

          A while back I made a quilt for a friend's baby.  I knew she liked chevron stripes which is very popular now and I thought it would be cinchy since I had made a Charlie Brown zigzag previously.  I made big mistakes on that quilt which I wrote about here but I wasn't about the throw those "mistakes" away.  I thought someday I will use them so I tucked them away in my fabric storage shelf.

"Mistakes"

        Then the other day I was browsing through Pinterest as I always do (I love Pinterest!) when I saw this quilt.  I fell in love with it and I thought I could use my mistakes to make a similar rag quilt.  And that's just what I did.

Front

Back

           I'm not sure if I'll ever do another heart rag quilt quite like this again.  I encountered major problems.  If I ever do it again I would not use minky so widely although I had to on this one since the "mistakes" had minky in them.  If I did this same look I would use white flannel or cotton instead of the minky.  Another thing I would definitely NOT do is put fleece in the middle.  This rag quilt is very plush but that plushness made it a bear to sew!  I actually broke 5 needles sewing through the layers especially at the points of the heart.  The one thing I would do again is add the binding.  It was the first time I ever added binding to a rag quilt and I wasn't quite sure how to do it.  I had seen others bind their rags so I knew it could be done and I just love how it turned out.

           This quilt was a lot of work but I'm proud that I re-used "mistakes" from another quilt, used up scraps from another quilt and turned out a finished rag quilt that I have fallen in love with!

Good Grief! Complicated simple rag quilt

My family and I were at a local restaurant recently and the topic of conversation turned to my rag quilting.  I was beginning to try some different things and my children were offering up their ideas of what I should do next.  I had just completed a recycled/upcycled blue jean baby quilt and I was ready for my next challenge.



 My son, Tyler, suggested I make the American flag rag quilt which I filed away for a summertime project.  My daughter, Hayley, suggested I try a simple design, like what's on Charlie Brown's shirt.  That captured my imagination and I couldn't think of anything else.  All three of us took turns sketching it out on napkins:

       Finally, I had my pattern.  It looked simple enough.  Yellow for the top and black for the zigzag.  I chose a buttercup yellow cotton and unfortunately I didn't buy enough.  Of course they were out of buttercup at my local fabric store and also at the three others that I went to.  The 4th luckily had the dye lot of buttercup that matched mine so I was able to finish the quilt.

       I layered yellow fleece on the inside to make it thick and warm.  That's where the second complication set in.  I didn't want yellow to show in the black zigzag so I cut black fleece and positioned it next to the yellow in two triangles.  Then on the advice of my son, I used black thread on all the black squares and yellow thread on all the yellow squares.  I stitched the traditional X through all the squares even the two rows of half black, half yellow.  It took a long time to get it just right.  There was one spot that no matter how many times I took out the stitches and re-sewed I still got a bit of black thread showing on the one side of the yellow.

       Now it was ready to be cut.  I was so hoping that it would turn out the way I had envisioned. Here is a view of the quilt before it was cut:

And here is the fluffy side:

I think it turned out beautifully.  I heard that a choir director in CA received this quilt as a gift from cast members who had all signed the quilt.  They presented it to him after the final performance of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.