Purple Lattice Quilt Completed!

This week I decided to finish another of my quilt tops from the “To Do Basket”. Entering another period of high temperatures I had a choice:  sweat outside or sew inside in my one air-conditioned room.  Obviously, I went with the second. It was just about a year ago that I pieced together the top of this Lavender Lattice Quilt. I started out following the pattern of one of the “Baby Block” quilts but then went off on my own tangent using muslin and a lavender Moda jelly roll.  Since it was one of my first attempts at cutting (with a rotary cutter) and piecing in over 40 years, there are places that are not as straight and aligned as I would prefer, but it was a good learning project and in the end you really cannot see the irregularities unless you go looking for them.  I know this is not the usual way to baste the sandwich together, but it works the best for me.  I thread baste the top to the batting, and then I pin the backing to those pieces putting in the pins from the top. For this quilt I stitched 1/4 inch on either side of the seams and bound it with one continuous piece.  It fits my little kitchen table perfectly and even looks nice on my dining room table. I love using lap size quilts on that little table, and because both the kitchen and dining room are lavender I chose these particular colors.

Ragged Square Quilts

Making my Ragged Square Quilts was just the most fun. Not knowing what I was getting into, I decided first to use the concept to make a dolly quilt. Following the wonderful tutorial on Crazy Mom Quilts, I used rectangular scraps from my scrap box. My sandwich was white flannel on the bottom, Heritage batting for the center, white flannel for the top, and then I stitched the little rectangular pieces on top of all three layers. The last thing I did was sew the binding around the edges and put the label on the back.


I was so tickled with the way it turned out, I could’t wait to start the lap quilt. Since I did not have many coordinated red and black fabrics, I went to our local quilting shop and treated myself to 12 - 1/4 yard pieces of really nice fabrics and a one yard piece of batik for the back. The red and black strips were from Moda jelly rolls. Mixing and matching the large, medium, and small squares for the top was a challenge, but it also was lots of fun. For the binding I used left over pieces from the top, and this was my first “one piece” binding following a tutorial by Heather Bailey entitled “Continuous Quilt Binding Directions.” The quilt turned out to fit a little breakfast table I have in my kitchen perfectly, so it is now being used as a colorful tablecloth instead of a lap quilt.
Here is the layout of the squares before stitching.

These photos show how the squares ravel after washing...be prepared to pull a LOT of little strings!The more you wash it the cuter it becomes.

My finished lap quilt turned tablecloth.