Tadpegs

As you may know I have been collecting together some vintage fabric so I can make myself a quilt. I have finally decided what it should look like. I am going to update you every couple of weeks to the progress of this quilt and if you have been thinking about trying out quilting it will be a very simple pattern so you should consider quilting along. I am making a VERY large quilt so if you decide you want to join in then you also might consider making it smaller but the basic principles will still apply.

If you want make one yourself then go out and get yourself some fabric. You can buy it or you can just collect together some old clothes or sheets. As long as you like the colours and they look nice together you can make it work, although it is easier if all the fabric is of a similar type and weight. The easiest is some medium weight cotton, and very heavy cotton or upholstery fabric is really tough to use. Once you have this you can think about how large you want your quilt to be. A standard double quilt has around 20 fat quarters or 5m of fabric, so aim to collect around this amount but of course you may want to make your quilt a different size. These baby quilts, for example, used 5 fat quarters to make the quilt top. Try to also get some plain fabric, I am using an old plain white sheet.

I realised as I looked around for inspiration for the patchworking that I didn't want each patch to be too fussy because I want the fabric to be the feature of the quilt-top. I was tempted for a while to make a simple squares quilt not unlike the baby quilts I shared last week. In the end I decided to go for octagons of the vintage fabric broken up with small white squares. To make joining in even easier you can omit the steps that turn the pattern fabric into octagons and make youself a square quilt. So if you want to learn how to make a quilt but want to stick with just squares for now, you can follow along with these instructions too.

If you do join in then I would love to see so post your photos on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag 'Tadpegs' or you can post them on the Tadpegs Facebook page, or add a link to your photos in the comments. Also if there is any part of my instructions you don't understand then just ask in the comments and I'll get back to you (even if you don't get round to making it until a year from now I will try and get back to you.) Come back in two weeks for the first stage of instructions! Zoe xx

If you would like to see the other sections of the quilt the links are below:

Fabric Cutting
Piecing
Assembling the Quilt Top
Making the Quilt Sandwich
Quilting

Obviously this is not a new idea. In fact sometimes it feels like there is so much bunting around that you might get all tangled up in it. That said, I do normally love it. I made this bunting a while ago for my daughters room. It's slightly different to traditional bunting because each flag is a separate flag. I wanted to be able to use it in one place, then maybe make it longer or shorter for somewhere else. Or maybe mix it up with other fabrics to make mismatching bunting (like this). So I made each flag separately and tied them together.

I simply cut two triangles of my fabric and pinned them right sides together. I machine stitched along the two long sides of the triangles. After turning it out the right way I pressed it flat. Then I pinned the open edges in the centre of 1m of pre-made bias binding and stitched it shut.

One flag is so easy to make and can be made with leftovers from other projects so its a fun way to start a bunting collection. Zoe xx

The Vintage Sheets Octagons Quilt: An Introduction

Making Bunting

Electric Photos