I Made a Little Quilt That Is a Ghost for The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt

The best thing, for me, about having a small niece, is that I can still make all the cute children's things that I want to make, because I still have someone to give them to!

Honestly, I might actually make more things for my niece than I did for my own kids, if you don't count things like clothes or homeschool materials or collaborative crafts, because when my own kids were this little kid's age, I was too busy parenting little kids to get enough crafty time to actually make them cute things! My younger kid was four years old by the time I made her first quilt, oops!

So when I saw The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt in a local bookstore a few weeks ago, and I was immediately charmed by it, and then immediately after that I wanted to make a little ghost quilt--I did!

Happily, the book's endpapers feature the quilt design of the titular little ghost, making it super easy to see what similar fabrics would look like. And even more happily, I did not have to buy a single thing to make this quilt! To be fair, a couple of the fabrics that I used are remnants that I'd previously bought with no purpose in mind, but everything else was honest-to-goodness scraps and stash, from the fabric for the top to the cotton batting to the cotton sheet I used as the backing.

All of the pieces are 5" squares. I wanted my quilt to be 10 blocks by 12 blocks, so I needed 120 blocks total. I sort of tried to keep the colors even between purple, aqua, and white, but it's a little blue-heavy. There are just a few grey blocks scattered in, because it turns out that I don't actually own very much grey fabric. The little ghost quilt in the book also has tan blocks, but for some reason I don't have ANY tan fabric, and anyway, I wasn't really feeling the tan colorway... which is perhaps one reason for why I don't own any tan fabric, lol!

To make the quilt, you lay out your pieces and rearrange them until you like the way they look as a whole, then stack them by rows, piece each row, then piece the rows themselves together, being quite fussy about lining up the corners:

Then you take up your entire family room floor making your quilt sandwich!

This is why I can never say that my creations come from a pet-free home, ahem. I would NEVER want my creations to come from a pet-free home!

I pinned my quilt quite well to the batting/backing, trimmed it out roughly, then quilted it via stitch in the ditch, earning myself yet another day of having a wonky back in the process. Why must quilting be so ergonomically incorrect?!?

Here's how it looks all nicely quilted and ready to be properly trimmed:

I got through trimming the batting before my supervisor came to check up on me:

I trimmed the backing to 1" wider than the quilt on all sides, then folded it in half twice, clipped it in place using every plastic sewing clip I own, and stitched it down:

Proper quilters use a blind stitch or another invisible stitch, but I'm happy with a plain old zig-zag.

And there's my little ghost quilt!

The lighting was soooo perfect right when I finished, but in the hour it took me to run out and do early voting, it got completely overcast. But I had to take my photos anyway, because Halloween presents are more fun if you can get them in the mail in time for the recipient to receive them before, you know, Halloween!

...and that's a bunch of cat hairs there on the purple block, sigh. I did wash it and dry it, and then go over it with the lint roller, before I put it in the mail.

Because you don't have to follow a pattern, just make sure that the pieces look cute together as a whole, this is actually one of the quickest quilts I've ever sewn:

I'm always especially pleased when I can work any of my favorite meaningful fabrics into a piece. Below, the smocked blue fabric used to be part of the only skirt that my older kid ever willingly wore. The silky white fabric to its right is actually from my wedding dress!

My favorite part, though, is that I used variegated thread to quilt it, and it looks so nice from the back!

Isn't it crazy that you can make something so substantial, and so pretty and perfect, entirely from materials you already have on hand? Historically, that's exactly what quilting should be, including reusing those bits of old clothes, and I LOVE that there's a children's book that encourages children to notice and care for the simple, unassuming gift of a patchwork quilt:

I didn't have any ghosts on hand to put into it, though, so that part's going to have to figure itself out later. 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Sew a Bookshelf Quilt Block

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

These bookshelf quilt blocks are a LOT easier to sew than they look!

I promised my rising college freshman a quilt for her dorm room bed, something that’s always easier to promise than it is to do, ahem. Just between us, I’d hoped she’d pick the Cats in Space pattern, because I’ve been dying to sew it without a good reason to, but instead she got on Pinterest, discovered bookshelf quilts, and asked if I could make her one of those.

My first ideas were significantly overengineered, based mostly on the Fandom in Stitches bookcase quilt blocks. I even went as far as to check out a bunch of books from the library, determined to teach myself Foundation Paper Piecing to make the quilt happen. Fortunately, though, I also started noodling around with my fabric scraps, and I figured out that I could use fabric strips to make a pretty darn convincing shelf full of books.

It turned out that my college kid loved the look of a plain bookshelf quilt block with nothing but books on it, no paper pieced vases or potted plants or little tchotchkes needed. And it’s certainly going to make my life easier to use the same piecing method for every quilt block! I’m also loving how I can use up fabric scraps, including more unusual scraps like bits of favorite clothes and old blankies and curtains, etc., to make books that also have secret sentimental value.

Here’s a tutorial for the basic bookshelf quilt block that I’ve been making dozens of over the past few weeks. This bookshelf quilt block is 10.5″ unfinished (10″ finished), but you can scale it up or down as needed.

Materials Needed

• neutral background fabric for the bookshelf. I’d recommend something like a Kona cotton solid for this fabric. My kid had suggested black or brown, but unfortunately not until I’d already started and gotten a couple of blocks under my belt, so for this quilt we’re going with the grey I originally chose.
• fabrics for the books. Anything that you can sew and that would feel pleasant in a quilt should work for this. Jelly rolls are really nice to work with, since they’re already cut to a good length, but any fabric solids, fabric prints that look believable as book covers, and most clothing-weight and home decor-weight fabrics can be used. I’ve got canvas, upcycled curtains, bits of old clothes, and refashioned formalwear cuts in the bookshelf quilt blocks I’ve created so far, and they all look great!
• measuring, cutting, and sewing tools. The most time-consuming part of the process is measuring and cutting all the fabric strips. I’m multi-tasking by catching up on Call the Midwife as I work–feel free to suggest what show I should binge next!

Step 1: Cut and piece your first book.

I’m going to assume that your bookshelf quilt block is also going to be 10.5″x10.5″ unfinished, so make your own adjustments if it’s not.

In your block, you want books that are different colors/patterns, different heights, and different widths. For heights, any book height between 10.5″ and about 2″ looks good, and for widths, I’ve been going with increments between 1.5″ and 2.5″.

Start with one book strip that fits those guidelines–above, my purple strip is 1.5″x6.5″.

Using a .25″ or .5″ seam allowance, as you prefer, sew a strip of background fabric short ends together to the purple fabric. I precut my background fabric into strips of my most common widths to save time here. Trim the background fabric as needed so that the finished piece is approximately 11″ (later, you’ll trim it down to 10.5″).

Step 2: Cut and piece additional books.

Pick a new book fabric and piece another strip! Notice how the new book, which once used to be part of a silk blouse, is both a different width and a different height. This is what will give realism and dimension to the finished bookshelf quilt block.

Don’t worry if your books don’t look good together, because as you can see above, you can rearrange them as you go until you get an arrangement that you like.

You can also piece the book strips to look like fancy binding, as I did with the book on the far left in the above image, and you can piece the book strips horizontally so that they look like they’re stacked on your bookshelf. The scrappiness of this project reminds me of the quilt-as-you-go blocks that I love to make!

Your final design should also be 10.5″ wide, subtracting the seam allowances, so keep piecing book strips until you’ve got it.

Step 3: Piece the bookshelf quilt block.

Piece the book strips together, ironing the seams however you like.

The final step to finish the bookshelf quilt block is to square it up to 10.5″x10.5″. If you need to add extra fabric to the height of the block, put a strip of background fabric along the top of the block and it will just look like you’ve got some short books in that section of shelves. If you need to add extra fabric to the width, stick another book on your shelf or add a strip of background fabric to either end to make it look like you’ve got space for more books on your shelf!

With 20 blocks done and 28 blocks to go, I’m so excited about how lovely this bookshelf quilt is looking so far! I’m getting anxious to start piecing blocks together to make whole shelves, but I know I need to wait until all my blocks are done so I can rearrange them until they look their cutest.

And with this method, the blocks are coming together so quickly that I might even have time to Foundation Paper Piece a couple of vases or plant pots or tchotchkes, after all!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

The Bookshelf Quilt Begins (with the Help of the Ginger Prince)

It has begun!

I usually only feel the lightning-quick passage of time at night when I'm trying to fall asleep, and I suddenly remember that both of my daughters will be going away to college in [insert exact number of days] and did I make enough of my time with them on this day that has just passed, surely not, I am wasting our precious time together and hey, I bet I will be SOOOOO sad when I drop them off, why don't I imagine what that will be like for a while, etc.

So yeah, that's a fun and easy way to fall asleep!

But helpfully, those intrusive thoughts took a quick little pass through my mind the other morning and I was suddenly struck with the thought of how MUCH MORE AWFUL it would be if I didn't even have the quilt I'd promised my daughter to give her when I dropped her off... and just like that, it was time to start the bookshelf quilt!

I'd also been psyching myself out by thinking that I'd probably have to figure out Foundation Paper Piecing to do cool bookshelf blocks, but to begin with I monkeyed around and pieced together some strips of scrap fabric to a neutral grey that I thought might make a good bookshelf background. I made a 10.5"x10.5" block that way, and liked it so much that I made another one. I put them next to each other, showed the kid, she freaking loved it, and all of a sudden the quilt became a LOT simpler!

Now the plan is to make the whole bookshelf from these simple bookshelf blocks, pretty much entirely from scraps and stash. I've already put in some sentimental fabrics, old Trashion/Refashion Show garments and scraps from multiple curtains, bits of novelty prints that the kids adored when they were small, etc., and on the whole it's just looking really cool so far. 

So obviously, when I had one whole shelf's worth of blocks, I had to set them up on a sunny bit of floor and photograph them together!

And then this guy showed up:

And then, to be honest, I just got really distracted taking cute photos of him in the sun:

He's just so beautiful, with his eyes that match his fur that matches the floor in the sun!

But you can kind of see the quilt blocks, right? They're the things under his cute little fluffity paws!

That orange batik stripe in the photo below used to be part of the curtains that hung in my bedroom when we brought his girl home for the first time. It's still some of the prettiest fabric that I've ever bought:

Aww, look! Now he's tearing them up, the little rascal! I put that grey strip in the middle of the block in the photo below to throw off the eye. I think it'll make it harder to pick out the repeat in the finished quilt:

Okay, he finally started getting bored/annoyed with me continually trying to get him to put his face in the sun:

And there you go--one whole shelf is done!

As I was laying these out, I realized that I could also make blocks that looked like stacks of books almost as easily, so I'll put some of those in there, too. I'd also like to have some blocks that have books leaning against each other, but I can't yet work out how to do those.

Could the answer be Foundation Paper Piecing, lol?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Sew a Mini Quilt Block Coaster

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

A mini quilt block coaster is a useful–and beautiful!–way to destash some of your prettiest quilting cottons.

I do not know what happens to all of my coasters! Over the years I’ve made tile coasters, chalkboard coasters, and endless quilt block coasters, and nearly all of those are simply… gone! To be honest, I probably don’t want to know why they go missing so regularly in the house I share with my partner and two teenagers, but just between us, I suspect foul play.

It’s fine, though. I do LOVE the hexagonal rainbow quilt block coasters that I sewed four years ago–rather, I love the single one of those that still exists in my family room!–but change is fun. Anyway, a new set of coasters is a great way to destash a bit of my quilting cotton!

For this project, I was specifically excited about destashing the last bit of a super cute honeybee print that I’ve had for quite a while and was down to its very last 1/16 or so of a yard. There wasn’t a panel of it wide enough to do much of anything with, but there were just enough bees left on it, at just the right size, for me to fussy cut the center piece of a set of bright, summery quilt block coasters.

So that’s what I did!

Turning a mini quilt block into a coaster is an easy project–all the hard work is in sewing that quilt block, after all! Here’s how to do it!

Materials

You will need:

• mini quilt block. Any quilt block that’s approximately coaster-sized, say between 4 and 6 inches wide, will work for this project. If you want something bigger, just call it a mug rug! For mini quilt block ideas, check out my mini log cabin quilt block tutorial.
• cotton batting or equivalent. Coasters are actually a great way to use up the last scraps of cotton batting leftover from a quilt project. I also like to use recycled polyester felt; if the felt is on the thin side, like craft felt often is, you can double it up for this project.
• backing fabric. This back-to-front binding piece should be 1″ larger than the quilt block on all sides.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies.

Step 1: Cut the batting.

Iron and square the mini quilt block, then set it directly on the felt or batting and use it as a template to cut the piece to size.

One of the nice things about both felt and batting is that they’re a bit grippy, so if you’re moving straight to the next step you don’t even really need to pin this. But a few clips around the edges are also fine!

Step 2: Measure and cut the backing fabric to size.

Prep your backing fabric by washing, ironing, etc., then lay it right side down onto your work surface. I like to set my quilt block + batting stack right side up directly on top of the backing fabric, then use a clear, gridded quilting ruler to cut the backing fabric 1″ wider than the quilt block on all sides.

You’ll need to trim the corners of the backing fabric to reduce bulk in the binding. I always just eyeball this by first ironing the corners down, as in the above photo, then hand-cutting them off about halfway between that fold and the corner of the quilt block.

Step 3: Sew the binding.

Fold each side in to touch the edge of the quilt block, then iron to crease. Then, fold each side in again at the edge of the quilt block, bringing that first folded edge over the quilt block to create the binding. Adjust the corners by hand until they look tidy; you can make them look mitered or leave them as-is, as long as there are no raw fabric edges showing.

Stitch the edge of the binding down to the coaster. On my sewing machine, a basic Singer Heavy Duty, I use a zigzag stitch with a width of 3 and a length of 2.

That’s the entire process to make a coaster! I made six coasters, some with hearts and some with bees, and I’ve already thrown a couple in the wash because apparently we’re all messy coffee drinkers in this family. I LOVE that these coasters are as easily washable as our quilts and clothes!

Because these coasters are so summery, AND because I’ve got so much fabric, ahem, I’m already thinking about the idea of using these seasonally and sewing some different coasters that we can use in the autumn and winter. Little skull centers with orange, black, and purple frames would be perfect for October, don’t you think? And perhaps little hearts with pink, purple, and white frames for Valentine’s Day?

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Sew a Mini Square in a Square Log Cabin Quilt Block

My log cabin quilt block obsession has grown both larger… and smaller!

The log cabin was the second quilt block that I ever learned to sew (everyone’s first quilt block should be the Nine-Patch!), and it’s remained my absolute favorite. It’s the kind of block whose versatility works for both newer sewists–wonky pieces are absolutely acceptable here!–and advanced sewists who want to experiment with color, value, and dimension.

My current obsession is mini quilt blocks, and I’m loving one specific type of log cabin quilt block, the square in a square subset, for highlighting a fussy cut center piece. The pieces around it, while constructed in the traditional log cabin way, make a series of frames that further highlight that piece, similar to the concept of highlighting the red “hearth” piece in the center of a traditional log cabin quilt block.

Even with this very simple block pattern, there’s a lot of scope for the imagination. I wanted something summery, so I’m playing with yellows and oranges, but there’s an infinite amount of variety of color and width to be played about with here.

Here’s how to make these mini square in a square log cabin quilt blocks:

Materials

You will need:

• fabric. Even though it’s a bit of a waste of fabric, depending on what width I choose for my log pieces, I’m cutting all my fabric 1.5″ wide and then simply adjusting my seam allowance to get the finished width that I want. My narrowest log pieces will be .5″ wide, so for those I’ll also be sewing with a .5″ seam allowance. The pieces that I want to end up 1″ wide will get a more traditional .25″ seam allowance.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies. I LOVE a clear, gridded quilting ruler for precise measuring and cutting. I cut the strips with a self-healing cutting mat and rotary cutter, and I fussy cut the center square using a pair of sharp sewing scissors. To make the fussy cutting even easier, I recently splurged on a piece of gridded plastic that I could use to make my own cutting templates. It’s NOT eco-friendly, but I love it and I’ll use it forever! For machine sewing, I like a narrow, sharp needle and matching thread. And like it or not, you have to have an iron!

Step 1: Cut the pieces.

Above, you can see that I’ve got my colorway figured out and my pieces chosen. All the strips are 1.5″ wide, and the center block is 1.5″ square. The little heart in the middle is just .25″ square, so I’m going to aim for all my finished logs to be .5″ wide. That means that all my seam allowances will be .5″. It’s overkill and don’t tell the quilting police, but just between us, I kind of love piecing with a wider seam allowance. It always feels so much easier for my fumbly fingers to handle!

Step 2: Frame the center piece.

Line up the seams of the first log piece and one side of the center block, wrong sides together. This first log piece will be the shortest, and although you won’t be able to tell by more than the lines of stitching, since all the pieces of this frame will be the same color, I nevertheless like to place it at the bottom.

I don’t like to start my stitching at the very edge of the fabric, because I can’t figure out how to keep the fabric from bunching at that edge when I do (let me know if you have tips!), so I like to offset the log pieces and then trim the extra away after sewing each seam.

Sew the seam, then use your sharp sewing scissors to trim each side of the log piece to match the edge of the center piece. Unfold and finger press the seam to whichever side you prefer–for this project, I’m pressing the seams open, but again, I think that’s something that I don’t want you to tell the quilting police that I do…

Above is the block that I sewed from the right side. You can tell that the top left is a little uneven, and if you want you can trim it down so it’s perfect again before you continue sewing.

Do I want to, though? Nope!

Here’s the block from the back side:

One piece of advice that I did receive once upon a time, and that I DO follow, is to iron quilt blocks from the right side, not the wrong side like in the photo above. I don’t know why that is but I do it anyway.

Sew the next three log pieces just the way you sewed the first one, continuing to border that center piece.

Each time, you’ll trim the log piece to match the two sides of the block, then iron the seam open (or to the side you prefer!) from the right side:

Remember that you can always trim the block to the correct size, so I don’t think you should get too fussy if one of your seams is a little imprecise. These blocks are tiny!

Your complete frame will look like the photo below:

Notice that you can see the lines of stitching for each piece in the frame, but that won’t really be visible if you’re not looking at it with your nose two inches from it like we are right now.

Step 3: Continue piecing additional frames.

Add as many additional frames as you want to this log cabin quilt block. I kept up with the .5″ seams for this quilt block, and you can see in the photo above that it’s definitely added “dimension” to the quilt block, but I don’t think it made it too bulky. I think I’m going to use these quilt blocks for coasters, anyway, so a little more thickness will just make them more absorbent.

I think that it looks the nicest to continue rotating the blocks and adding pieces in the order that you started with the first frame. So if you went clockwise like I did in the above photo, keep going clockwise! And even though we’re still looking at it with our noses two inches from the block, I think the stitching in the frames already looks less obvious, and it will continue to fade into the background the more frames you add.

Here’s my finished quilt block, below:

Instead of adding another frame with that 1.5″ strip I have there, I’m going to use a different piece of that fabric to sew a back-to-front binding when I turn this, and several of its identical friends, into coasters.

But the world is your oyster when you’re choosing what YOU want to do with your square in a square mini log cabin quilt block! You could make a zippered pouch, or a needle book, or a quilted postcard, or gather it together with 359 more mini quilt blocks and make a whole quilt top.

Let me know what you end up making--you know I'm nosy like that!

P.S. Want to know more about our adventures in learning, and the resources that we use to accomplish them? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!