:: The quilt-making workshop today is part of a series for quilting beginners. Two weeks ago, we started making a modern lap quilt and today we are going to take the next steps. Next week we’ll finish it off. It will be so exciting seeing the end result of your own lap quilt. I can’t wait!!! ::
Introducing Lap Quilts
As I mentioned last week, what makes a quilt a lap quilt, is its particular size. That size is about 2x a baby quilt, i.e. substantially smaller than a quilted bed cover.
There are many reasons to learn to make your own quilt cover, and particularly a lap quilt. For one, a DIY quilt will save you lots of money as store-bought handmade quilts tend to be rather expensive. Furthermore, making a quilt yourself lets you to custom-make it in exactly the way you are looking for. You can pick your favorite style and colors, and you get to ensure that whatever you create perfectly matches the room (and person) it will belong to. Go for soft tonal quilts for grandma, and for bright pinks for your youngest daughter or blues, green and graphic fabrics for a teenage boy. Embellish it to personalize your quilt to your liking.
As they are warm but not bulky, lap quilts are a favorite quilt size to cuddle under when watching TV or in front of the fireplace. When not in cuddle-use, use your lap quilts to decorate your home. They make gorgeous quilted throws to decorate your sofa, or porch bench, at home, or perk up a chair in a guest room.
I am just mentioning this again, just in case you land here for the first time today, and you haven’t (yet) worked with us through our prior workshops. You can find links to prior workshops at the end of this article.
OK. Let’s begin the workshop. It’s over to quilting expert and instructor Janeen van Niekerk!!!
Quilting Workshop for Beginners #11
The Next Steps for
our Lap Quilt
Making a Lap Quilt – Further Steps
Last time, when we started making our lap quilts, we put together our blocks for our lap quilt measuring 50″ (130cm). Everything was plain straight sewing and the only real skill we needed was lining up our lines and corners.
Adding our Quilt Batting and our Quilt Back Fabric
The front of our quilt is looking bright and modern. So for my back I wanted something ‘plain’ but could only buy a piece of fabric that measured 115 cm across or wide. I had to buy another strip about 12″ (30cm) wide to make my back fabric wider. I decided on two contrasting fabrics that would go nicely with the front.
To make my back fabric wider, I cut the back fabric in half (because lengthwise it was fine), and join my strip into my back fabric to make a “stripe” down the middle of the back.
I could have made the widening stripe anywhere, but I decided that middle was going to be okay. I sewed the other half of my back fabric onto the opposite side of the stripe and then ‘ta-da’ the back was wide enough. I pressed the seams to the darker side fabric in the back so that they would lie down flat before I added the batting.
The quilt batting was added and then the top was placed onto the top to make my quilt ‘sandwich’. I smoothed out any wrinkles and pinned or basted the whole lot together.
Marking the Front to Sew Your Quilt Lines
Let me first introduce a new quilting supply, before I start showing you how to use it.
Quilt Masking Tape – A Beginners Quilters Tip
How you use this tape is simple: You position the tape on your fabric and use it as a guide so your quilting lines are exactly where you want them to be. Now you can quilt straight lines too!
One roll of tape can last a long time, as you can simply rip it off when done with a section, and then re-use it in another place on your quilt. Just in case you’re worried about it, quilters tape leaves no stickiness or residue on your fabric.
Brilliant, nah?! Something to put on your wish list!
I taped around the block that I wanted to sew and then just followed the line around the masking tape – turning my quilt as I got to a corner.
I decided that my quilt needed to have lines around the focal point blocks and to do this I have some masking tape that is about 0,25″ (1cm) wide.
Once I had gone around both edges of the masking tape, all I had to do was to pull off the tape. Easy.
On the back of my quilt sandwich I have box shapes that are showing through.
Further Quilt Embellishments
If you would like, you can carry on with taping the boxes around the focal point and sewing around it, or you could even make stripes with the masking tape and sewing a straight line down each side. It really is up to you to do as much or little quilting to your lap quilt as you want.
Want a Quilting Challenge?
You could watch YouTube videos of Leah Day doing Free Motion Quilting Patterns, but they really are a lot harder than they look. Straight lines is best for a beginner quilter.
Tidying- Up our Threads
All sewing threads from the ‘quilting’ have been sewn back into the middle of the sandwich to hide them and also to secure them.
Next Week’s Workshop
Next time we will finish off our quilt by sewing up the binding and making neat mitered corners.
‘Til next time, Janeen
Want to begin sewing quilts with us?
Join our free online quilting workshops, which you can take at your leisure, any time you want.
Free Quilting Patterns & Tutorials & Classes in this quilting course by Janeen van Niekerk:
- Class #1: Fussy cutting ~ How to Make a Quilt: Free Quilting Beginners Class.
- Class #2: Quilting Tools – What you’ll need as a beginner.
- Class #3 : How to Choose & Work with Quilting Fabric.
- Class #4: How to Read & Work with a Quilt Pattern.
- Class #5: Creating a Finished Quilt Block .
- Class #6: How to Make Quilt Rows – from finished blocks.
- Class #7: How to add borders to your quilt.
- Class #8 : How to finish a quilt: add backing, batting and how to bind a quilt.
- Class #9 : How to Make Quilt Blocks more Exciting.
- Class #10 : How to Make a Modern Lap Quilt.
- Class #11 : How to Make a Modern Lap Quilt, the next steps.
- Class #12: How to finish a Quilt :: Modern Lap Quilt.
About Quilting Instructor Janeen van Niekerk
Our latest news of quilt making instructor Janeen van Niekerk is that she has just launched a brand new paper piecing magazine.
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Quilt artist Janeen van Niekerk is an avid quilter. In particular, she’s an accomplished paper piecing designer. She does it all with a passion.
Janeen’s prolific range of hand-made quilts (she takes commissions for personalized, stylish portrait quilts), as well as her unique quilt patterns (think quilts featuring safari animals and trees, or kids toys) are inspired by her environs; she lives in sunny Pretoria in South Africa, with her husband and kids.
Janeen van Niekerk (spelled by some as Janine van Niekerk)
Quilting Pattern Library & Other Training Courses
Or,… continue your journey with Quilting patterns, tutorials and ideas featured here at FineCraftGuild.com (beyond Janeen’s quilting course).
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