Quilts on Tuesday-She Must Be Crazy

Recently I did a series on quilts in my possession and why they are so special to me. As I have said before, it is hard for me to consider sleeping under a commercially produced comforter. Mom mom has kept me in quilts since I was four. She has also provided quilts for each of my kids since they were infants. Unfortunately, since Diana got a double bed about 4 years ago she has been using a soulless commercial quilt.

That will be changing in the next few months. She will be graduating and heading off to college in the Fall. It is important to me that she have a decent quilt to take with her. We have talked on and off about a quilt for her for some time. She expressed a desire for flannel. Here is an example of the pattern of a rag quilt I want to make for her. It seems like it will lend itself to my very beginning level of skills and my interest in piecing rather than hand quilting. Rag quilts have exposed frayed seams and no bound edges. This pattern sticks with squares, which will make piecing easier for a novice like me.

Although my mom could easily make any sort of quilt Diana could want I really want to do most of the work with Mom as an overseeing consultant or maybe an assistant. I think it's time I learn to do something of this nature. I have to say Mom has already been indispensable. I showed her the design, told her how big I wanted each block and how big I wanted the finished product. She punched all the information into some snazzy quilt software she has and it told me how much fabric of each color I'd need. She also agreed to go halvesies on the fabric since the cost of that kind of serious yardage stopped me in my tracks. Since a rag quilt basically is three layers of flannel it ran into some hefty change. I did manage to find plain king-sized flannel sheets on sale for $20 which I will use for the middle layer. BIG bargain! Woohoo!

Now the fun part comes. For Diana's birthday I gave her just the sheets but didn't tell her why. She is confounded as to why I got her king-sized flannel sheets. For Christmas she will be getting the plain backing fabric from me and the different plaid patterns for the top from my mom. It's going to be an interesting stretch of time until Diana finally knows what she is going to be getting because it is driving her crazy trying to figure out why she got the sheets.

Ssshhh....don't tell.

I'll keep you posted on the progress once she gets all the fabric and I start actually assembling it. If I succeed I can cross #46 off my bucket list.