Kids Can Quilt! – Day 1
Welcome! We are so excited you are here. We absolutely love to quilt and are excited to share this skill with our younger generation. Each day this week, we will post a new video with the next step of the quilting process. By the end of the series, you will have a completed top! We’ll also share a bonus video with some ideas on how to finish your top and turn it into an actual quilt.
Quilting is a great introduction to sewing because it’s all just straight lines. For this project we will be making what is call a Disappearing 9 Patch. This is a easy pattern that looks complicated.
Fabric Amounts
Today we are looking at Fabric. This is a perfect scrappy project. If you know of someone that sews or quilts, ask them if you can go through their stash and see what fabrics they have that could work. If you are buying fabric, look for fat quarters. They are approximately 18×22″. You will need 9 of them. If you buy yardage (cutting fabric from the big bolts), you’ll want 1/3 yard of each fabric.
One last option is to use charm packs. Charm packs are groups of 5″ fabric squares already cut out. This is a great option to use if you don’t have a rotary cutter, ruler, and cutting mat, or for the younger kids that it might be easier to limit cutting right now with.
If you decide to buy charm packs, you will need 108 – 5″ squares total. Check the amount of squares included in your pack and purchase multiples to get at least 108.
You can also make this quilt scrappy with more than 9 fabrics. This works great if your fabric don’t have a full 1/3 yard or fat quarter. You’ll just need to adjust the cutting amounts of each fabric. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow to make sure you have everything you need.
How to Pick Your Fabrics
In the video we talk about 3 different color schemes you could pick.
Monochromatic – This is using all the same color. You could do a quilt of all blues or all purples. When picking fabric, make sure to get some light fabrics, some medium fabrics, and some dark fabrics. How light or dark a fabric is is called Value. By using different values it will add more contrast and interest to your finished quilt top.
Warm or Cool Colors – Another option is to use all cool colors or all warm colors. On the color wheel, we call the blues/greens/purples cool colors and the reds/oranges/yellows are warm colors. Choosing all cool colors or all warm colors is a great way to pick fabrics for your quilt top.
Contrasting Colors – When colors appear directly across from each other on the number line, those are called Contrasting Colors. Contrasting colors always look good together. One set of contrasting colors you are likely very familiar with is red and green. Other common combinations are blue and orange and purple and yellow.
We are using a primary color scheme, primarily red, yellow, and blue fabrics. We chose these main fabrics by picking a fabric we liked and pulling the colors from the design.
After you have your fabrics, set them aside and tomorrow we will come back and cut them out. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to ask! You can email us or post a comment on the blog post of YouTube video and we’ll come back to answer them.
