Baby quilt - Part One

As my niece is now old enough to have a proper quilt (1 year old), and I wanted a project, I decided to make a baby quilt. I started off with a relatively simple idea - just a chessboard style pattern. I found an easy baby quilt pattern online and it was basically sewing 5" (15cm) squares together into a patchwork. I made it using 8 x 6 of the 5" squares.

TOOLS YOU WILL NEED

Fabric shears/rotary cutter

Self-heal mat

Sewing machine

Unpicker

Box of pins

Ironing board or thick wool to protect your table surface

Iron

MATERIALS

Thread

Soft fleece/throw (90cm x 120cm)

100% polyester wadding (90cm x 120cm)

24 x 5" (15cm) fabric squares in Colour A (you can also buy these ready-made online)

24 x 5" (15cm) fabric squares in Colour B (you can also buy these ready-made online)

LET'S GET QUILTING!

This is my 5" x 5" square pattern. I just cut out 48 squares (in total) from two different rolls of fabric, but you can use pre-cut squares if you find that easier. There are lots of lovely squares in different patterns on Amazon and at any good haberdasher's (which is often cheaper)

N.B. Remember that if you have a specific measurement to adhere to that you'll need a seam allowance. 1.5cm is usually what people use. I just went with the second groove on my sewing machine for this one as all of the squares are the same size.

I have used lovely John Lewis materials which I had made into a skirt but didn't want anymore. The materials are all natural fibres (linen and cotton) which, I have made sure, can be washed at 30 degrees. N.B. I washed the fabric before I made the skirt just in case. Some materials shrink so I like to check before I put all that effort into it!

I pinned the pattern to my fabric and cut it out with my mom's Finkars fabric shears. They're lovely to use! I have since seen a tutorial about Rotary Cutters, though, and I'm completely converted! Come on Amazon, I want to play with the rotary cutter I ordered! 

Lay down your 5" squares as 6 rows of 8. I placed them in order to see how they will look when it's finished. Make sure your pattern matches - I didn't want any random upside down pigs in my quilt...

If you're using random scrap fabric, make sure that you unpick any unwanted strands of sewing first, like the zigzag stitch you can see here.

I have put 2 fabric squares with their right sides (the side you want showing) together. I have pinned them together and am sewing with the right edge of the fabric on the second groove of my sewing machine. I am sewing a straight line with a centre needle.

TIP: If you want you could draw a line where you want to sew (to make sure your seam allowance is correct). Make sure the pins don't get caught on your needle or sewing machine foot!

Once you've done your first seam, attach the next fabric square with the right side facing one of the squares you have just sewn. To begin with, sew your 8 squares together in a row. You'll want to repeat this 3 times.

Two lines should have colours in this order...
ABABABAB

Two lines should have colours in this order
BABABABA

Here's my first line of squares! Yay! I felt very satisfied at this point.

I haven't taken the pins out of the bottom line so, in reality, the two lines should match up exactly.

In the end, you should have 6 rows of 8 squares.

TEA BREAK!

Sit down, put your feet up, rehydrate, show off your fancy Cath Kidston china for once and stretch your back. (I recommend having a good chair and a nice high table for quilting as I did most of it on my coffee table - ouch. I have since relocated to what is now my craft room)

Iron your seams! It makes everything flat and easy to work with.

Another picture of some lovely flat seams - wow my photographer really likes flat seams!

Pin your strip of 8 squares (in colours ABABABAB) to your strip of 8 squares (in colours BABABABA).

Pin the vertical seams together so they match.

TIP: Make sure you pin the rows together and flip the right side over so you can check it will match before sewing. You could run a bit of tacking thread along it if that helps (no upside down pigs for me). Unpicking sucks, checking is so worth it!

Simply sew a straight line (centre needle) down the whole of the horizontal row so that you get 16 x 2 squares all attached like this.

ABABABAB
BABABABA

Repeat this with the other two rows, then iron those beautiful seams!

I promise I'm not OCD but I was very excited by 4am (having got through the whole first series of The Vampire Diaries and having finished the main part of my quilt!) so there was more seam ironing to make it pretty. 





**The story of why the above picture is only 4 x 5 squares - The next day my mom promptly said, "hmm I don't think it's big enough! Have you measured her cot?" Luckily I still had loads of material (the skirt I made was really long) so I just enlarged the blanket with extra rows so it is, which is what you're doing! (8 squares x 6 squares).**

This is what your finished patchwork should look like! 8 x 6 beautifully patched 5"squares









**Great thing about quilting - You can always whack on another row and it barely makes a difference as long as the squares are the same size and the seams are matched well! Yay quilting!

I bought a lilac fleece throw from Primark £2.30 (but you can use anything you'd like as long as it washes at 30 degrees) which I have cut to the same size as the patchwork. Cut a roll of polyester wadding to the same size as the patchwork and fleece. The wadding goes between the patchwork and the fleece.





**NEXT TIME ON BABY QUILTING**

Keep a look-out for my next post when I will be finishing quilting this project!

I'm just waiting on my polyester wadding to come in the post so that I can put it between the patchwork and my lilac fleece throw, then I can sew it quilt-style! 

Introduction to Quilting

Although I've been sewing for a while now, this is my first foray into quilting. I've really been enjoying it and have found some great starter tutorials online.

To get you started, here are some of the tutorials and blogs that have inspired me so far!

ONLINE TUTORIALS AND DEMOS

• Intro to quilting (stuff you’ll need) by Amy Smart http://www.diaryofaquilter.com/p/beginning-quilting-series.html

• Rotary cutter demo (stuff you’ll want) with Mary Fons            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDMQyerht9E

• How to quilt circles by Jess at Elven Garden Quilts http://theelvengarden.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/decipher-your-quilt-circles.html?m=1

• Bias binding tutorial by Debbie Shore                                                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLWfH8o49Ws

GETTING IDEAS FOR QUILTS

I have been scouring the web to find different types of quilts. 

Pinterest has been great for making mood boards and deciding which shapes make eye-catching effects. 

How to make a pompom!

It's PomPom time!

I saw a tree in my local town covered in pompoms recently! Amazingly I had some free time this Christmas, so I decided to make a pompom in the same way I did at my Grandma's house when I was younger. So here is my recipe for lovely pompoms.

Tools

Pen/pencil

A pair of scissors

A pint glass (to draw around - or to contain liquids)

50p coin / Glue stick (or similar circle shape to draw around)

Materials

A big ball of leftover wool (I used black and yellow for a bumblebee but you can use whatever you'd like)

Thin-ish cardboard - I used an Amazon packet

2 googly eyes

Superglue

Card/paper (glittery card/paper makes nice wings)

How to make a pompom 

Step 1: Take a pint glass and some cardboard. Use the pint glass to draw 2 circles with a pen or     pencil (the shape dictates what diameter the pompom will have). Cut out the cardboard circles.

Step 2: Cut a central hole about the size of a 50p using some good sized scissors. It can be a bit tricky so get an adult to help! ;) The cardboard doughnut needs to be a good thickness (but the thinner the cardboard the larger the pompom will be, because you can wrap more wool around it).

Step 3: Take the two cut-out cardboard doughnuts and put them together like this.

Step 4: Make a few balls of wool that are small enough to fit through the cardboard doughnuts holes. I probably used 5 by the end (3 black, 3 yellow).

Step 5: Tie the TWO cardboard doughnuts together with the end of one of your small ball of wool and start wrapping the wool around the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 6: Well done! It's looking good so far! (Pat self on the back) Make sure that you wrap the wool around until you can't see the cardboard. Try and keep it even so the stripes will come out even. (If you are doing a plain pompom or using multicoloured wool it won't matter so much).

Step 7: (Can you tell at what time of year I made the pompom?!) Tie the black wool to the end of the yellow wool and keep "wrapping." It doesn't matter where the knot falls but if you can make it near the centre/edge of the woollen doughnut you can snip it off later.

Step 8: Keep wrapping the woollen doughnut until it's black (I was impatient but it's worth persevering for the stripes!). Knot in another of your yellow wool balls and wrap it until it's yellow. Keep doing this until there is no hole. Towards the end you'll just be pushing strands of wool through the hole which means you're nearly on the way to finishing your pompom! Yay.

Step 9: Put a pencil through the middle of your wool doughnut to hold the strands of wool in place. Now cut around the edge of the pompom until you can see the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 10: Almost there. Careful now. Get a strand of wool which is long enough to encircle the circumference of the cardboard doughnuts. Slowly poke the strand of wool in between the two cardboard doughnuts and keep doing this as you cut the woollen doughnut. Try not to cut the woollen strand while you're doing this.

Step 11: Now that your strand of wool encircles the pompom, wrap it around a couple of times and make a knot so that the pompom does not fall apart (they get stressed easily). Cut the cardboard doughnuts and pull them away from the wool.

Step 12: I used googly eyes. the sew-on ones are quite good as you can easily tie them to the pompom. I just used superglue here.

Step 13: Make sure it has a loop to hang it somewhere. As it's Christmas, I put mine on the tree and gave him some paper wings. I just cut them out of a white sheet of A4 but you could use card or even glitter paper!  

Step 14: EXPERIMENT!!! Hack your pompom and find out how it works. Here are some ways to make different coloured/patterned pompoms...

Welcome to the MonsterEyesEvents blog!

I'm starting up with some fun events in local venues this year, so I am very excited for January 2015! Crafting, sewing, climbing, live music and knitting are some of my hobbies and I love spending time with family and friends. Expect blog posts, reviews and pictures about what I'm creating, facilitating, and generally getting up to, throughout the year!