I love quilts.

The look of them, the coziness of them, the warmth of them.

When I was 18 I started a new hobby of making blankets.

A small plastic loom had caught my eye when I was in Michael’s one day, and I bought it on the spot.

It was one of those weaving looms that came with rings of stretchy material to make pot holders and such.

I didn’t like that material. And I didn’t want to make pot holders.

So I figured chunky yarn might work. And I figured blankets would be nice to make.

It did, and they were!

I started buying up chunky yarn at the Woolco (now Walmart) in town, and discovered the therapeutic, relaxing habit of drafting blanket patterns for family & friends, weaving together squares of chunky yarn, and sewing the squares together.

My mom still has the first one I made 🙂

The most recent one I made was for Elijah. It’s special because the middle section was his crib blanket, and the large beige squares in the middle of those were inherited from my grandmother’s stash of yarn. Lots of memories “woven” into this cozy blanket already…

After Josiah was born, I learned to sew so I could make wedding veils for my sister’s bridal store – the perfect job from home.

Combine the love of blanket-making with the skill of sewing, and voila – QUILTS!

I made my first quilt for Josiah a few years ago – I wanted to find a way to save the piece of his favourite blanket that wasn’t shredded and incorporate it into a new blanket. A quilt was the solution.

A fellow blogger posted about her simple technique for making quilts from scrap fabric, and suddenly I saw the possibilities 🙂

Since then I’ve made warm weather and cold weather quilts for all us Sklars for the living room, and now I’m finishing up quilts for our beds. I still have one to go for Elijah’s room 🙂

Then it’ll be back to the chunky yarn weaving of squares to make heavier blankets for our beds for the really cold weather that is coming to our Northern Ontario home.

Josh made me a large wooden loom a couple of years ago – this loom cuts makes the process more efficient by far – I can weave 1 large square that is the same size as 4 smaller squares made on my old plastic loom. Yes, I was still using it more than 20 years later 😉

Now back to my most recent creation – a queen-size quilt for about $30 in about 10 hours…

• I had alot of scrap fabric from old pillow cases and pieces I found at Value Village through the years.
• I went to Value Village and bought about $20 of linen to round out my quilt stash (including half of a duvet cover for the back of the quilt as shown below)

• I found a GREAT deal on quilt batting on Amazon – about $10
• I inherited a bunch of thread from my grandmother and I love that I got to use it in this quilt

That’s where the $30 comes into play.

And here’s how the 10 hours comes into play…

• I mapped out a pattern with the fabric I bought or had on hand (this was my first attempt at quilting with small squares and I loved the result)
• I sewed the pattern together in lines of squares

• I pinned the back piece & batting & patterned front piece together
• I sewed the 3 layers together using a zig-zag stitch along the front pattern lines – Josh once again saved the day by making me an extension for my sewing machine. He pieced together pieces of wood and plexiglass he found in his workshop and suddenly the always-frustrating task of sewing the quilt lines into one big piece was more a joy than a trial.

• I finished the edges off with an easy quilt binding method (simply make either the bottom or top layer about 3″ larger all around, and fold the edges over like a hem onto the smaller layer)

Then I spread the quilt out on my bed, crawled under it, and enjoyed my creation 🙂

All for about $30 and about 10 hours. Not bad at all.