How to Make a Super-Simple Recycled Quilt

comments (30) January 23rd, 2009     

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Remove all the safety pins and turn the quilt right side out. This will hide the blanket between the two sheets.

Turn under the raw edges of the sheets along the open end. Press these folded edges, then hand-sew them together. Don't worry about catching the edge of the blanket in this stitching; we'll take care of that in the next steps.

Flatten out the quilt and safety pin along all four edges.

Flatten the quilt back out, making sure the blanket is lying flat inside the two sheets. Place safety pins at 4-inch intervals around the edges to help hold the blanket in place while you're working on the next step.

Tie-quilting: Take a small stitch through all three layers of the quilt.

To finish off our quilt, we need to bind the three layers of fabric together all over. If you have a sewing machine that's suited for it, you can always machine-sew all over the surface of the quilt in any pattern that strikes your fancy. Here, however, we're going to use a simpler method called tie-quilting.

Thread some sport- or worsted-weight yarn onto a large-eyed needle with a sharp point. Take a small stitch through all three layers of the quilt, as shown. Make sure the needle passes all the way through the bottom sheet. You may find a thimble useful here.

Trim the ends of the yarn short.

Cut the yarn so you have two lengths of about 2 inches sticking up from the quilt, as shown.

Tie the ends in a tight double knot, and trim to 1/2 inch.

Tie these two ends in a tight double-knot and trim them to about 1/2 inch. Repeat this process to place more ties all over the quilt.

A view of the ties from the back of the quilt.

Here's a view of the ties from the back of the quilt. You can place your ties in any configuration you like. Mine are in a grid pattern, with about 4 inches between ties. The main point is to spread the ties all over the quilt so that the blanket doesn't shift around inside the sheets.

You can be precise about the placement of the ties, measuring the distances between each one, but I find that since they're a fairly subtle part of the overall quilt design, it's easier to line them up visually.

Once your ties are in place, your quilt is ready to use! See, that wasn't so hard...

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