So Let it be written . .Rag Quilts are Hard

I have sewn two blankets. And by I, of course I mean my mother. It was a fun project. It took us a few months working once a week while the girls napped (and at the end when I got impatient to finish they watched copious amounts of Disney movies). My mom choose the fabric awhile ago when Kenzie was begging for a pink blanket and while I was ignoring her and trying to force primary colors on her. Then along came Hannah, another pink loving girly girl.

I've made my peace with pink. In fact if you could hear me I would be singing Aerosmith, "Pink is my favorite color. Pink it's like red but not quite."

I remember first being attracted to the idea of a rag quilt because I read online that it was an "easy sewing project." Easy schmeasy peasy. It is a lot of work. And although the sewing skill required is minimal, you still have to sew in a straight line many, many times. Some people may have this skill. But by about square number 19, my skill, which was minimal to begin with, looks like a boxer avoiding a hit--dodging and weaving all over. Luckily, the rag quilt is supposed to look a bit homey. It's charming to have crooked lines. It looks like pioneers sewed it by hand. At least drunk pioneers. Or pioneers who were watching "Enchanted" and laughing themselves silly about the part where the prince is hit by bikers in mid-song. But pioneers didn't have movies. They did have hard liquor though. But I digress.

We choose 12x12 inches for our squares. I'm not sure why. I think because that made our inside batting 10x10. And because we felt as if larger squares would make our lives easier. They did. I pondered making a two 3.5 footx5 foot squares quilt, but my mom advised me that might look bad. Last time we made a rag quilt (in primary colors) we did the squares in 6x6 and there was at least 20 times more sewing. (If I were Mike I would do an equation and figure out how much more sewing there really was, but I'm not Mike. I hate math. I'd rather exaggerate like the true English major I am). We ended up with 70 squares in each blanket. 10 down and 7 across and it fits their twin mattresses well. Hannah has the hand fabric in her blanket (it was too much fun with the alliteration) and Kenzie has the feet fabric.

Now if this were a really helpful blog I would have taken pictures of each step and written out directions. But this blog is obviously not helpful. It is more self-centered and narcissistic, and I'm sorry about that. So instead of giving you helpful directions for making your own rag quilt, instead I will say, "Gosh my fingers hurt from all that cutting. And it seems silly to cut perfectly good material just for cuteness. But I did it anyway." Let the pinkness be with you.