Simplified Rag Blanket with Fleece Backing

I am a novice when it comes to sewing and I have had these cute fabrics for a long time and been too afraid to do anything with them! I finally got the guts up to sew a little quilt together. I really loved rag quilts but HELLO! That is a lot of work and I am both lazy and not that good of a sewer. I simplified it up and made it super easy! Here is what you do. First cut your fabrics into squares and lay them out how you want them to go. Next you need to sew them into rows. When doing a rag blanket you want to sew the wrong sides together to leave fabric to cut and fray.

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Just sew straight along the the edge. I left about half an inch of fabric allowance.

Finish all your rows and keep them laid out in position.

You need to then iron all of your seams open so the rows will sew together nice.

Now you sew the rows together. You do it the exact same way, sew the wrongs sides together leaving the same amount of allowance.

When you have them all sewn together lay your layers together. I laid my black fleece on the floor, then my batting, and next my fabric top.

I cut the batting right at the quilt top and then I left 3-4 inches of fleece because I was going to use that as my binding.

Then I pinned like crazy!  I pinned at ever corner of my squares and all along the outside of the border. Make sure the layers are not bunching up but that you are keeping them even.

I did not know how the fleece would go through my machine with batting and top layer added to it.  Someone told me that I should tie it together with yarn but I didn’t want that look. So I improvised I sewed at each of the intersections where you would put the yarn ties if you were tying it. I just lined it up in my machine and then sewed forward and back a few times about 1/4-1/2 inch long. Just make sure your back is laying right before you do this so there is no pucker.

The back of the fleece will look like this when you are done.

I honestly don’t know how to sew a binding on and I also didn’t have any extra fabric. The beauty of fleece is that it doesn’t fray so you don’t have to finish it off. So I took my fleece and cut it off leaving an inch on each side.

Then I folded the fleece over and pinned it. Once I had it all pinned down I sewed the fleece edge down.

Make sure you sew it close the the fleece edge because otherwise it might not catch the fabric. Like this:

I had to unstitch it and resew it back together. Keep your sewing in tight on the fleece edge. As far as the corners go, I sewed along one edge. Folded the other edge over and sewed it over too.

After you have the edging done you need to clip the edges about every 1/4 inch so when it gets washed it will fray all up. Just be sure not to clip so far down that you cut into your stitches.

My boys love the blanket and it was such a great start to help boost my sewing confidence that I could make it all by myself.

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