On Friday work had fried my brain and given me a sore back so, as you can do when self-employed, I declared the weekend started mid-Friday. I needed something not too mentally challenging, so the first think I did was ‘fix’ the flanelette blanket.

When I’d washed it the batting had come scrunched up within the swatches, so I decided to cut them down the middle, straighten out the batting and then sew it all together again:

I also sewed a rectangle within each swatch, to make sure the batting didn’t move around again, as you can see more clearly on the back:

Next I worked on turning the curtain fabric swatches into a quilt. I had bought a length of calico and washed it, so I got it ironed and worked out what size to make it by looking up standard bed sizes, folding it into the two smallest (cot and single) and tossing the swatches onto it to see if they’d cover enough of the fabric.

I figured I had enough for a slightly smaller than cot sized blanket. ‘Enough’ being a relative term, of course. I really had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t care so long as it didn’t take too much time and I enjoyed the process.

Once I’d cut the fabric to size, I decided the swatches needed more variety in sizes, so I cut them up, mostly into two pieces. Then I messed around with the arrangement until I had something I liked.

I ironed them down, which didn’t work as well as I’d expected, with some of the swatches peeling up again. I could have tacked them down, but that seemed like too much effort. This was supposed to be The Lazy Quilt, after all. A couple of pins in each swatch was good enough, even if it meant I spiked myself a few times. I’m sure I’m not the first person to bleed for their quilt.

Grabbing some cotton in dark red, green, blue and a pale tan colour, to match the details in the swatches, I got sewing. Applique sure uses up thread fast, so pretty soon I was out of yarn. I grabbed some more from Lincraft in the evening. The next day I filled the time waiting for the solar dyeing to do it’s thing by sewing, and by the end of the day all the swatches were done:

I’m pretty chuffed with how it looks.

Now I just need to attach batting and backing and do the quilty bit. But before I do, I think I’d better look up a few tutorials.