The Last Snowflake Rag Quilt of Springtime

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The more rag quilts I make, the more I believe that rag quilts really are the lazy busy and stingy frugal quilter’s best friend!

The center of this snowflake quilt sat on my “Unfinished” pile  for a very long time while I held an inward debate on how to enlarge it to a comfortable lap quilt size.  I had bought the quilt center on Ebay with (as usual) no very clear idea of what I wanted to do with it. Definitely blue or white borders, or both. But how deep a blue? How much white? And why, oh why, didn’t I have the perfect blue or white already in my stash?

Making the top into a rag quilt was the solution.

I used a deeper blue fabric for the borders and was able to give the quilt a white inner “border” and white “binding,” without actually having to cut and sew either an inner border or a quilt binding. I really like the contrast provided by the fringed edge of the white backing fabric, which is warm and cozy Polartec fleece. Read about using fleece instead of regular batting and backing fabric.

Deeper Rag Fringes Add Contrast

I’ve been experimenting with wider and wider rag edges and liking the results.

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To create these deep fringes, I layer the quilt top on a piece of fleece that is wider all around than the top fabric. In this quilt, the backing fabric was 3/4″ wider on all sides.

I spray basted the layers together, then sewed the quilt’s sections together with a large 1″ seam allowance. Since the backing is wider than the top, this creates a 1/4″ seam allowance for the quilt top fabric and a 3/4″ allowance for the fleece backing. After the seams are clipped, the fleece fringe hides the edges of the top fabric.

The outer border has a 2″ seam allowance that let me make a deep fringe around the outer edge of the quilt. After squaring up, I stay stitched all around the quilt, two inches from the outer edge. Then I cut the fringe with my rotary cutter. This is faster and easier on the hands than using rag quilt clippers.

I’m posting this finished quilt to Work in Progress Wednesday on the Freshly Piece blog. Check out today’s post to see all kinds of quilts other people are working on.

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