It's Friday and I Finally Have a Fast Finish

Test Quilt /PVPV Carnival quilt.

An acquaintance came to me with a problem last week. Her 3rd grade daughter volunteered her to make the class quilt to be auctioned at the Spring Carnival. She knows how to sew, but had no idea how to put a quilt together.  I figured I could make it faster than explain how to do it. 

She gave me the bag the teacher had sent home. Contents:  18 6" squares roughly cut by scissors already decorated, less than 1.75 yards of green fabric and a package of "wrap-n-zap" for batting. Hmmm ???  This was going to be a small boring quilt no one would bid on. 

Since Little S attends the same school and will also benefit from the proceeds of the carnival I decided to put some effort and creativity into it.  

First step - square up the kids' squares and find out what size I was really dealing with - 5 3/4".  Then cut 18 more squares of solids in primary colors. Red, orange, yellow, blue and purple from my stash. Green from the teacher, hoping there will still be enough for borders and backing.  Little S got it all nicely arranged. I sewed it together using Bonnie Hunter's web technique very quickly. 

Inner border. The stripe from my stash worked well - framed up the center section without distracting from the kids' blocks. 

Outer border was a little trickier although it doesn't look like it now that it is finished. I really, really did not want to piece the back. Some quick math and I cut off a bit more of the precious green for borders leaving the bare minimum for a backing.  I knew it would be close, but I was hoping to have enough green for the entire outer border and not need to add cornerstones to make up the difference.  Success with 2" to spare. Saved me a lot of extra work. 

The "wrap-n-zap" batting that was provided was too small and I'm not sure it was even intended for quilts, so I turned some batting scraps into Frankenbatting and that worked fine. 

I had a variegated thread in bright primary colors that I had picked up on sale and figured I would eventually use on a kid quilt. It was perfect. The colors show up great on every color in the quilt. Loops all over went quickly. I quilted just around the edges of the kids' blocks so as not to distract from their drawings. Put on a binding and it was done!  

I called this a test quilt because I kept careful track of all the measurements and the time it took me to do each step.  In the last weeks I have been asked twice about making quilts. I have made quilts in the past on commission but afterwards thought it really was not worth it. So I did some research on how to price a quilt and by tracking time and measurements I now have a little bit of a baseline to work with. It was also a test for me see how much I could accomplish when I worked steadily with no distractions. Doesn't usually happen that way but just this once it was nice.  Finished size 44" x 44".  Total time - 5 hours.  Wow!

I am pleased with how the quilt turned out. I think it is child friendly and ended up a nice snuggle size!

Check out some other finishes at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Crazy Mom Quilts.