Make it: Super Easy Quilt

If you want to impress someone this year with a super easy, yet really impressive, gift this year make them a quilt blanket. Everyone loves snuggling up under a cosy blanket, they make great gifts and you can make them really personal by picking fabrics that you know the recipient will just love. I have to be honest, I am not the worlds greatest quilter, I think it stems from not wanting to cut up beautiful fabrics into little pieces just to sew them back together again. However this easy quilt requires very little cutting and you still get that lovely cosy blanket at the end of it.

I chose once again to use my some of my current favourite fabrics from Dashwood Studio to create this 'quilt' These are from the Retro Orchid collection.

You will need: 6 x 30cm strips of your choice of cotton fabrics (at least 110cm) wide, 150cm x 100cm of fleece fabric, Fabric Scissors, thread and your Sewing Machine.

Start by pinning and then sewing together two of your cotton strips. Pin them right sides together making sure you are sewing a nice and straight seam. You can use your machine foot to help guide your stitching. Then un-fold and pin and sew your next strip in place.

Continue until you have sewn all your strips together. Fold your quilt front in half length ways and mark the centre line with a row of pins. Then be brave and cut up the middle line you have marked, removing the pins as you go. You then want to take your two halves and flip one so it is facing the opposite way around. Line the two pieces up and sew them back together to create the chequered front piece.

If you have been neat, all your squares should line up nicely, if not don't worry too much, mine didn't, I think it adds a bit of quirkiness to the finished piece. It made it look more handmade! So next, is to add the fleece backing, I have not added any wadding to mine as I like my blankets to be a little more floppy and snuggly. Stitch all the way around the edge of your cotton and fleece. Make sure you leave a gap around 15-20 cm open at the end. Use this opening to pull the whole of your quilt right side out.

Folding in the raw edges, start at the opening and sew a line of top stitching all the way around the edge of your quilt about 1-1.5 cm in from the edge. And  you are all done, see I promised it would be easy!

If you can bear to part with your new cosy blanket it would make a great gift for anyone this Christmas, It would be so cute for a new arrival in baby colours and equally in fun boy fabrics for any Kiddos you need gifts for, a great alternative to more plastic toys. I am gifting mine to my Mother-in-Law who loves handmade presents and always admires the quilts in our home.

Who would you make one for this year?

Sammy xxx


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Makers Month Giveaway! (CLOSED)

Hey all, by now all the excitement of our Makers Month has been and gone :(  But we have been able to feature some amazing British Designer/Makers and some other cool brands along the way. We thought, what better way to round off the month than with a Giveaway. You could win all of this...

The Learn to Sew with Lauren Book - from our post on the 3rd September

 Charlotte Skirt Pattern from By Hand London - from our post on the 19th September

Fat Quarters from Dashwood Studios (Cable Cozy tutorial)

 and Liberty (Elbow Patches tutorial)

 Cloud Brooch by TigerLilly Quinn

All you need to do is tell us your favourite British Designer/Maker in the comments below and all this could be yours!

Don't forget to leave your email address in the comment and we can contact you if you are our winner!

Competition closes at midnight (UK time) on Friday 10th October and is open Internationally, so everyone can benefit from our best of British selection.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Lots of Love
H and Sammy xxx

 Live, Love, Make, Like, Share, Follow, Tweet, Pin, Add, Enjoy. 

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Makers Month: Make it: Cable Cosy + free PDF download

Being Makers Month here on our blog I wanted to create a tutorial for you that used home grown fabric.  I love American fabric designers like Robert Kaufman, but I have recently fallen in love with a new British company Dashwood Studio. We stock their fabric in my shop Sew Crafty and they are a great seller for us, our customers love that they are a British company using British designers.