A Cozy Flannel Quilt

Bree is well on her way to surpassing my sewing skills.  She really wants to learn to sew her own clothes.  Love that, but one step at a time.

Now that Bree has worked on her sewing basics, she was ready to move onto something more fun.  I found this EASY quilt tutorial through Pinterest and knew that it would be a fun project for her.  She wanted to sew something special for her new little cousin, and this was perfect!  This simple quilt uses only straight stitches, and once you are finished with the top, all that is left is the binding.  Love that!  Quick, easy and cute all in one.

Bree picked out a cute color scheme of “grizzly bear brown” (for her Uncle!) and coordinating girly flannels.

Check out this video for detailed instructions, but here is a quick overview of what we did.  The fabric you will need is…

(2) 1 yard cuts of flannel to make the top and back.  (Eventually cut into a 36″ square)

(5 different coordinating fabrics) 3 1/2″ x 45″ strips.  You will eventually cut each strip into 3 1/2″ squares.

(1) 1 yard of batting

Make sure to buy a bit of extra fabric for each cut, the fabric with shrink when washed.

The grid is  4 1/2″ square, where we centered the cut fabric squares.  We used a piece of chalk to grid our lines.  It was fun to watch Bree lay out her quilt.  It was very important to her that it was not a perfect pattern, but also that no 2 alike squares were too close.  Love it!

Once the quilt was all planned out, we used a glue stick to secure the fabric temporarily.  I loved this step since there was no pins for Bree’s fingers to get pricked on.  They suggest to use a fabric glue stick, but we just used a washable paper glue stick and it worked perfectly.  We were careful to keep the glue in the center of each square so we didn’t have to worry about sewing over it.

Next we sandwiched the top, batting and bottom.  Bree sewed straight lines down each side of a line of squares.  Then turned the fabric a quarter turn and sewed down the other sides of the square.  Notice my favorite feature of this sewing machine for teaching little ones…the speed adjustment.  We set it on a slow speed so that no matter how hard she pushed on the pressure foot, she could only go too fast.  No sudden speed bursts that can scare our beginner sewer.

I helped by holding the extra fabric.  It had a tendency to slip off the table and pull the quilt wonky.  Bree finished this quilt in an afternoon.  She was so determined to finish it and so proud that she was able to sew it all her self!  We added turquoise binding strips.  This is not necessary, but I love how it turned out.  This was the only part of the quilt that she needed help sewing.

Bree could not wait to see what her baby cousin thought of it!  So sweet!  She also enjoyed showing it off to anyone that stopped by.

Once this quilt is washed a few times it should “fray up” and look similar to a rag quilt.  I’m sure that Bree will be asking to sew another quilt soon, only this time on a larger scale for her.  I am so proud of our little seamstress.  Great work Bree!