Spring has made it's way, grudgingly, into central Iowa. Days have ranged from OK to lovely, but the nights are still nippy, so Magdalena and I made a quilt for her to snuggle under. I'll tell you how we did it.
I had in mind that, being the short-cut-taker that I am, I would buy one of those little packs of precut 2 1/2" fabric squares at the quilt shop. It would contain a collection of Civil War era reproduction prints, and they would sew up quickly into a darling small quilt. So ran my fantasy as I drove into town. The basket of tiny precuts was right where I remembered it would be, but there were no Civil War era packs. I did buy a Christmas one to be used later for my little friend. Back to square (get it?!) one.
I went through my drawerful of Civil War prints, picked out a nice variety of darks and lights, and tore -yes, tore- a bunch of 2 5/8" squares. Magdalena helped me sort
We matched up a dark with each light, and placed every pair right sides together. I drew a light line diagonally across each top square, and stitched a scant 1/4" on each side of the drawn line. I've shown a square with dark dots, just so you can see it. Then I cut along that center line. Now I had a bunch of scraggly, sloppy half square triangle blocks. But not to worry. I trimmed them into nice , even 2"
squares. Magdalena and I laid them out in a pleasing pattern, with all the darks pointed up, and I sewed these little square blocks together, row by row. I cut a generous piece of reproduction fabric for the backing, and sandwiched backing, thin batting, and top together. After safety pinning the layers in place, I hand quilted the tiny quilt, which I actually found quite relaxing. The hand quilting gives it old
fashioned appeal. I decided to make the binding by folding the edges of the backing to the front, fooling it under, and hand stitching it in place. I did this, rather than sewing on a separate binding, for two reasons. One: it cuts back on bulk, which is important Ina very small project like this; and two: the aforementioned shortcut-taking. I pulled the edges of the backing out of the way, and trimmed the batting even with the quilt top. Then I trimmed the back to 1/2" beyond the top and backing, cutting the corners so that I could, again, reduce bulk and get nice, sharp mitered corners.
I folded under 1/4", folding over each corner 1/4" as well, then brought this folded edges over the front of the quilt, and pinned.
I slip stitched the edges all around, and Magdalena's cozy quilt was complete! It measures 8" x 8."
