Quilts and Kids in April

I’ve always been fascinated with quilts. Not only do I love the patterns, textures, pieces, colors but I love that they are meant to be cozy and keep you warm and even tell a story. I’m fascinated by the master quilters who can slice and dice fabric and stitch it into amazing shapes with color placement that makes me swoon, literally.

I think you know that at LuckyStitches I offer classes to HomeSchoolers. Well, I’ve declared April to be Quilt month, and we are going to be making quilts! Let me tell you that I am no master quilter, by any means. I can’t stand cutting (but my rotary blade has certainly helped with that). I have made a quilt before, and I loved it! I still love it. Iz loves it too. They make for wonderful keepsakes. They also tell stories. I’ll be sharing resources with the kids so they can understand the history, passion and art in quilts too.

For this class, however, we won’t be going to the fabric store to make our quilt tops, we are going to be looking in the closet. Using clothes, linens, towels, blankets, anything made of fabric or fabric scraps. We’ll be making the ultimate in scrap quilts, turning something that doesn’t’ seem to have a use anymore (pants that don’t fit) into something eternally useful (a quilt!). For years I’ve used old sheets, blankets, towels and clothes and made them into something new, preventing the “old” item from going to waste or ending up in a landfill (did you know that the dyes used in coloring fabric are mostly toxic? You can read more here or here). Hopefully, by making these quilts, we can also raise awareness of our use of textiles, how they are made, thrown away or even better – re-used.

Here’s our tentative schedule if you want to participate or follow along:

Week 1 – Cutting. We’ll be cutting our found items into 3″ strips. We’re going to be holding on to all our scraps and perhaps use them along the way or figure out something new to do with them.

Week 2 and 3 – Sewing. We’ll be sewing our strips together. End to end then strip to strip. We’re just going to keep sewing until we have enough for a quilt that’s about 50×50 ish.

Week 4 – Quilting. We’ll be safety pin basting our quilts together, using batting if necessary and attaching a back. Then we’ll quilt it all together either machine quilting or tying.

Week 5 – Binding. Maybe using scraps or linings or something left over, we’ll stitch together strips for a binding and sew it on.

I’ll be posting inspiration, photos and stories along the way.

**Remember, I can sew, but I’m not a super duper quilter. I’ll be showing the kids some super basic techniques. Hopefully, this will give them the foundation they need to go and either take another quilt class or start on another quilt or even make their own pattern. Whatever the outcome, they will have made something that is eco conscious as well as get more practice sewing, and have it for the rest of their lives (as long as mom doesn’t clean up their rooms and throw everything out that’s on the floor…not that these will end up in a pile somewhere…).

I hope you’ll follow along. Even better if there are kids in your life who can follow along too! And if you do decide to participate, please let me know.