Grandpa's Hugs cuddle quilt

by SueJean
(Dot Lake, Alaska, USA)

Growing up with a quilting grandmother and a sewing machine in the house, I always thought I'd try quilting some day. After all, it's in "the blood" or so I imagined.

That "misconception" gave me the somewhat misleading idea that learning to quilt was going to come easy as I already knew how to sew. This whole silly mindset led me to jumping in feet first without considering what was and wasn't really possible.

For my second quilt I decided to take my husband's old jersey pullover shirts and a pair of barely worn flannel pajamas to make a "cuddle quilt" for his only grandson. I had no idea that soft, flimsy fabrics like jersey are shunned by wiser heads. My mind was wrapped up in the idea of making a soft, cuddly quilt that shouted "I love you Grandson!".

As I struggled to pull this all together, I made a trip to a "not-so-nearby" quilt shop for some advice. The woman behind the counter frowned at my madness and mumbled a few words of solace. Clearly she was not in favor of attempting such a thing.

In love with my idea, I persevered with my vision using strings to make additional blocks when I ran out of shirt pieces big enough to make 10.5" blocks. The dark colors grew daunting and the seams shifted madly. I knew there was no way I was going to wrestle this through my little machine so I resigned myself to tying it.

The backing was a single piece of soft plush knit from a remnant bin that fit perfectly. For binding I folded the front over the back and sewed it down.

The bottom line is that the quilt came out JUST RIGHT and the grandson loves the thing dragging it around wherever he goes. We have pictures to prove it and this is the only quilt I've made that I can say that about.

Word of advice: When you have your own moment of inspiration, go with it. You just might surprise everyone with the end result.

This article was printed from Generations-Quilt-Patterns.com

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