Backyard Baby Rag Quilt

My last major project for Christmas was for my brother and his little baby to come.  I found some fabric that has bugs and snails and things of the sort on them.  They totally remind me of us being kids and hunting for bugs then freezing them in the freezer to kill them.  There was never a shortage of bug jars hanging around our house!  So many good memories doing stuff like that.  So after seeing a few of these quilts that a friend of mine has made I decided to try my hand at them.  I used this guide and this guide.

I started out by cutting out a bunch of 8 inch squares.  I then laid them out and put together my three layers.  The back is blue on the outside and green on the inside so I tried not to mix the blocks up.  Each square of three layers then got an X sewed through them, my only word of advise on this is don't pull the fabric or try to help it along, when I did that I ended up making the fabric pucker up a little.  Then you sew the rows together.  After that you sew those together and then sew around the outside.  I'm a sewer, not a quilter so I felt weird not backstitching the ends so after I finished with the feeder foot I put back on the normal one and backstitched diagonally over the corners.  All that hard work the last thing I wanted was for anything to unravel.  Next is the clipping part, I bought a pair of rag quilt snips and I would greatly recommend you do the same if you want to try this. They are really sharp and don't make you work quite as hard, and your arm will be tired even with those so do yourself a favor and buy the snips (or you could try talking someone else into clipping it).  After it is all clipped you will want to wash it (I washed mine twice to minimize the lint my brother would have to deal with).  One of the guides recommended doing that at the laundromat so you don't get all the thread in your washer, I didn't listen to the guide, the next quilt I make will be washed at a laundromat.  I had to clean out the lint trap on the washer a couple times.

In the end I had a beautiful quilt that my brother loved.  I can't wait to make another one for someone else.  They are pretty easy and give you a huge feeling of accomplishment when you're done.  A win win if you asked me!