One of the annual projects that my young sewing students have is to sew a bed sized patchwork quilt for themselves.
They get to choose fabric squares, stitch them together, back, topstitch quilted lines and then bind into a quilt which they take home and keep.
I provide most of the fabrics, upcycled sheets and clothing but they have to bring a few personal pieces to incorporate into the quilt.
They have 2 options, they can either stich a rag quilt with flannel batting, or a squares quilt with a fleece or flannel backing.
I find that some of the older students prefer the rag quilts and the younger ones, the squares quilts.
Pinning the binding corners
Top stitching the binding down
I think they choose the squares because there are no hard and fast rules, they don't have to line the corners up and can join the quilt in a random manner, as wild as that gets. The top is then backed, quilting lines run over it, some do more and some do less, then it is squared up before backing and binding.
Some of them make many random magic squares and then add those to their chosen color mix.
Cleaning threads before backing and quilting.
