I made a quilt

I've always loved the beautiful soft quilts that I see at friends homes. I always fancied making my own. A couple of years ago I decided to get started. I cut and pieced scraps together from my sewing offcuts. The process of cutting out took ages, and by the time I'd pieced a handful of small square and rectangles into bigger squares and sewn about 40 of them together, I'd had enough.

I was sorting through my stash and found the bag with this in. There were just a few squares left to sew together, and since my physio said I could do a bit of sewing as it was good for keeping circulation going in my operated on side, I thought I'd give it a go. I stitched the remaining few squares together and pressed the patchwork. not a bad size, about 1m by 1.5m. I found some fabric that was suitable for the backing and bought the wadding from The Sewing Machine Guy (he has some beautiful fabrics in stock - check them out or visit if you're in Northumberland). Ellen from Ellen's of Ellington showed me how to true the sides, pin the layers together and a really simple way to quilt it all together - I just used straight lines! Then she showed me how to bind it - the edges look great, but I'm not really happy with the corners - I think my binding was a bit too thick to get a really neat finish here.

I know many quilt artists would be shocked by my piecing and overly simple quilting, however, this quilt has used up a good chunk of scrap fabric, so it's definitely recycled. The only thing purchased was the wadding, so it was also cheap (materials wise). And with the current cold spell in the UK. I have sat underneath this for the last week, keeping warm. even the kids think it's warm and snuggly.

I'm not sure I'll ever make one again,  I'm trying to find different ways to use up my waste fabrics and just use less generally, but if I find myself with a supply of good quality cotton offcuts - well who knows?