Rag quilt

 It's done! Including the washing and drying, it took a little over 24 hours to complete this rag quilt

This is a nice light weight lap throw. Since it's only two layers, it flows and wraps nicely.

The backing is flannel, so it's nice and soft.

I used all 10" square pre-cut fabric, which helped speed up the project.

The hardest part was the snipping. After assembling the blocks, I had to snip the seam allowances every 1/8". That part took me a little over four hours. Luckily, I have spring loaded snips. My hands were very sore at the end.

While it was interesting to learn a new way of joining quilt blocks, I'm not sure this will be a method I use very often. I have threads everywhere, which isn't unusual with sewing. However, with all those little snips I have a feeling I will be finding threads for days.

From everything I've read and watched on YouTube, a mesh laundry bag is recommended for washing. I did use one. I also put in a color catcher and a micro fiber cloth. It turned out that the color catcher wasn't necessary with this particular quilt. The micro fiber cloth did catch some of the threads, but not as many as I had expected.

After washing, I went outside to shake out the quilt. It's a good thing I did! I could not believe how much lint there was. I also turned the mesh bag inside out, nearly doubling the amount of lint. I put the quilt back in the mesh bag for drying. After one drying cycle, the quilt was still damp in spots, so I removed it from the bag and put it through another drying cycle.

There wasn't much in the lint screen, but there were still lots of threads on the flannel side. I decided to put it through the washer and dryer one more time. There were a couple of small clumps of lint in the washer. The surprise was that the lint screen had a thick mat of threads. There were still lots of threads on the flannel side, which came off easily with a lint roller.

This is not a true quilt, in my opinion, because there are only two layers. There are directions for making rag quilts with a layer of cotton fabric, flannel, or batting in the middle. I can only imagine how much lint one of these would generate!

Something new

Yesterday just wasn't my day for crafting. I set aside the bookmark. I haven't given up on it yet, but I also haven't figured out where I went wrong.

I tried piecing a pinwheel block from memory, and it did not turn out. I was able to salvage it and find the correct way to put it together. 

I tried a second time. It went together easily, but I wasn't happy with either block. The seams pucker and the centers don't lie flat. I'm pretty sure that the problem is with the printed fabrics. They were very inexpensive, from Temu, and they are coarser and stiffer than the solid fabric.

Feeling like a crafting failure, I decided to sit and read for a while. Then, daughter Joanne called and we started talking about rag quilts. I know that rag quilts have been around for a long time. They just never appealed to me. However, Joanne's daughters decided they wanted to try making rag quilts. 

I ordered pre-cut kits for both girls and for myself. Since they live so far away, I need to work on the same project so that I can answer questions over the phone. The kits won't arrive until next week. In the meantime, I've been watching lots of YouTube videos on rag quilting. Everyone has "the best way" to make a rag quilt, and each person seems to have their own spin on the process.

Since nothing else seemed to be going my way, I decided to shift to trying rag quilting.

Using pre-cut fabrics, I put the fabric from Temu on the top and flannel blocks on the back. I don't think it matters that the colorful fabric isn't quite 10" square. Putting the fabric back to back, I simply sewed a big X. I have a total of 30 blocks, so this will be 5 blocks by 6 blocks, lap throw size. I was able to sew all of the blocks in about an hour and a half, and that included pressing each piece of fabric to get the wrinkles out. Before dinner, I spent about ten minutes figuring out the layout for the quilt. They were all stacked in order for sewing in no time.

After dinner, Dave went outside to take care of the chickens and cats. I decided to see how much I could accomplish while he did chores and cleaned up. Using 1" seams, I had all of the blocks sewn into rows in less than half an hour. 

I also managed to clip the rows together in pairs. I'm ready to sew today!