Dave's Homespun Plus Rag Quilt

The back of the quilt

The raggedy front

       I have been fascinated by the various "plus" quilts I have  seen on quilt blogs.   I was planning to use up some left-over homespun plaids and checks to make a quilt for my son.  That pattern seemed perfect. 

       I have made two homespun rag quilts:  

Pam's quilt

Andrew's quilt

     I also had made (in 2003) an appliqued quilt using homespuns.

I used reds and greens and used fusible interfacing on the hearts, and then used a machine blanket stitch around each heart.  I quilted it with a meandering stitch in red.

This quilt has been a cozy couch quilt for a decade!

     When I had initially tried to organize my stash, I found I had some leftover squares with hearts already attached.



Little left-over hearts.  I still have more - another project will surely follow!

      I cannot believe how much homespun I had leftover - even after making those three quilts! 

     I cut the homespun fabric into 6 inch squares, and tried to get 10 squares for each "plus".  (front and back with little batting filling)   Some of my scraps only yielded 5 squares, so for those "pluses" the back and front are different fabrics.


     I cut the batting into 5 inch squares, planning for 1/2 inch of extra fabric for the raggedyness.  Next time, I would leave a full inch all around.

The batting squares.  This turned out to be a good way to use up those leftovers from trimming quilts!

     Mid-July, we had a trip that involved some long drives, so I took some of the homespun sandwiches to quilt by hand in the car.  I planned on simple "x"s to stabilize the batting.  I chose a dark red thread, rather than go with either cream or black.  The handquilting, in a moving car, proved to be very slow, and not particularly enjoyable.  The squares below were the ones I finished.  The car ride each way was 7 hours!  The pattern I worked out called for 224 finished squares.  If I continued at this pace, the quilt would be finished in 2030!  



     Once I was home, the little squares got quilted up in short order on the Bernina!


Stacks of 5 squares - I ended up also stitching around the perimeter, since some of the batting in an earlier quilt had bunched in one of the earlier quilts.

The tricky part was laying out the squares in the pattern, and then sewing them up in the right order.  I had to leave this laid out on my living room floor until it was done! 

     I had some special snippers and used them to cut into the raggy seams.  If I had used the 1" seams, I think none of the batting would show. 

I ended up washing to quilt twice, and had to remove the threads from the lint trap every 10 minutes. 



A close-up of the red quilting on the blocks. 

The heart blocks!

The finished quilt is large - about 70 x 80 inches.  It is soooo soft and warm.   

The warm quilt on the new white chair.  The old chair finally fell apart!

     I still have more leftover homespun than I expected, but much less than before!  I will be adding my label to this quilt today, and sending this off to Dave this weekend.   I have four other projects underway, and hope to have another finish to share soon. Enjoy the holiday! 

Take care,
Gretchen