Sawmiller's Quiltery - a warm welcome guaranteed
Sometimes you do a class for fun, not to learn techniques just to relax and the Raggedy Ann quilt class was such a class for me, this is also the perfect beginner's quilt and with gentle guidance from our tutor Diane Barnden, any beginner would love this class. Diane is very hands and ready to help.
I have done some quilting before, so I went along ready to made an easy project with a nice teacher, at one of the best places to take a class Sawmiller's Quiltery which is off State Highway 2 at Te Marua.
The Raggedy Anne Pattern - Diane Barnden
Close-up of the frayed edge - a feature of this quilt
note Diane's artful use of the bright green
The quilt is made up of square sandwiches of fabric. We used a top layer of cotton, a layer of flannel then a bottom layer of fabric. Diane's fun quilt substituted a vivid green fabric for the flannel in the centre, but with fabric requirements for the quilt of 3.5 yards for the top and 3.5 yards of fabric for the bottom PLUS 3.5 (3.2 metres for each) for the middle, flannel is a fine substitute as, with winter coming up, it will make the quilt super cosy, The middle fabric, as you can see above is not seen clearly so expensive fabric would also be very wasteful!
My little Brother sewing machine and fabric were all set up for the first part of the day's work - cutting the squares. Ours were 7.5 inches (19 cms) square but the squares can be any size the sewer desires, or has enough fabric to sew with, making this a very versatile technique.
Quilt back squares 7.5/19 cms inches ready cut for use.
Quilt front squares 7.5 19 cms ins ready cut for use
We also had to cut our flannel into 7.5ins/19cms squares as well, then we made the fabric into sandwiches (e.g. fabric/flannel/fabric). The flannel went in the middle and was surprisingly grippy when layered with the fabric. Our lovely tutor Diane Barnden, warned us that the flannel would grip but it was the kind of thing that you did not realise exactly what she meant until you tried it!
Sewing the Sandwiches together - strip piecing method
The next stage was to sew the squares of fabric together with two diagonal crosses corner to corner. This could have taken forever but I strip pieced the squares together. This basically means I ran them through one after the other, end to end without stopping which is how I ended up with a heap of joined up squares that you see in the picture above!
Next stage - joining the squares with the seam facing FORWARD!
Now comes the tricky part. I got this wrong a couple of times (and will again I'm sure!). Instead of putting the seam at the back of the quilt you sew it so it faces outwards - to the front. Why? Because this is the part that makes your raggedy edges for your quilt! Now isn't that just fun! You can see how I have begun to start the sewing into blocks of four (making it a bit easier to join together than long strips, Diane advised!)
You need to take a bit of care with your placement if you are using different colours, otherwise they can just be random if you are not too worried and if you have a lot of different fabrics! Then you give it a good wash and start the task of snipping the exposed seam before wacking it into a dryer to go super fluffy.
This was the loveliest class and Diane was a lovely teacher. Thankfully I did not need as much help in the class as one lady did and I managed to get a lot done. This is one quilt I will love to finish!