Sprinkles is a doll quilt pattern I designed especially for the rag dolls in The Dress Up Bunch – but it’s also just the right size for American Girl dolls and lots of random teddy bears and stuffed animals.
Look at Bean – all ready for bed in his flannel jammies, cozily tucked in under his brand new quilt.
He’s ready for his bedtime story!
The quilt (and the name) are inspired by a river of hot fudge covered with brightly-colored sprinkles. That’s sure to bring him sweet dreams. 🙂
It’s super easy to make – comes together in just a few hours. You can make it during a naptime or two!
If you’ve never made a quilt before, this is a great one to start with. I designed it to be especially easy! The blocks are easy to cut, they go together without any fussy seam intersections, and the quilting is easy.
Here’s how to make it!
Materials
1/2 yard chocolate brown fabric
1 fat quarter backing fabric
small scraps for the sprinkles (less than 1/4 yard total)
Chocolate brown fabric Cut 4 strips 2 1/2″ wide, the full width of the fabric. From those strips cut the following. . .
4 rectangles, each 2 1/2″ x 14″
17 squares, each 2 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
18 rectangles, each 2 1/2″ x 1 1/2″
Cut 2 strips 2 1/4″ wide for the binding
Sprinkles fabrics Cut 18 rectangles, each 2 1/2″ x 1 1/2″
Backing fabric 1 fat quarter, uncut
Step 2
Join your smallest rectangles into squares. For each square join 1 brown rectangle with one sprinkle/colored rectangle. Sew them together with a 1/4″ seam allowance (I very strongly recommend using a 1/4″ foot on your sewing machine for accurate piecing!)
Press the seam allowance flat. It doesn’t matter which way you press it - this quilt has no nested seams. I usually press toward the darker fabric, but in this case, the brown flannel was thicker than the sprinkles fabric so I pressed it toward the thinner fabric.
Repeat with the remaining small rectangles until you have 18 squares.
Step 3
Join all the blocks together as shown in the diagram.
First sew the blocks
into rows, alternating
brown blocks with the
pieced
brown/sprinkles blocks
you made in Step 2.
Press all your seams
flat.
Then sew those rows
together with your long
rectangles between
them. Press your
seams flat.
A small doll quilt pattern like this is also a great opportunity to give Big Stitch Quilting a try.
I quilted this top in two steps. First I quilted around each sprinkle. Then I quilted across the surface of the entire quilt with diagonal lines that went corner to corner on all the squares – skipping over the sprinkles.
The squares are small enough that no marking is needed - just eyeball it. You can see the quilting in these photos of the front and back of the quilt.
Dress your doll in their favorite jammies, read them a story, then tuck them in under their cozy new quilt. Then brag a little! Or a lot. :-) You just made a quilt! Pat yourself on the back. Call everyone you know. Take photos and share them in the Shiny Happy People group. Share them other places too – but tag them #shinyhappyworld so I see them too. 🙂
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The Dress Up Bunch is a collection of cute and cuddly rag dolls. Get patterns for the dolls, plus all their fun outfits and accessories!
For a while now I’ve been thinking about designing a free scrap quilt pattern that’s as fun, easy and versatile as the Warren the Charity Bear pattern.
Just like Warren, I wanted something that was fast. I know some of you make and give away a LOT of these quilt every year.
I wanted something that was easy. Easy enough for a beginner or a child to make.
I wanted something that was versatile. Something that you could play around with and make a lot of different looks – and not get bored making lots of them.
When Craft Hope announced that they were looking for some quilts for part of their newest project, I jumped right in.
I’m making my quilt entirely from scraps. I sort my scraps by color and I’m tackling one basket at a time, so the blocks so far are all purple and red. When I’m done it’ll include all the colors of the rainbow. 🙂
My quilt also uses Quilt As You Go – but a different technique from what you’ve seen me use for the applique quilts. For this quilt I’m actually quilting as I piece – a huge time-saver and lots of fun. This method also allows me to use batting scraps. Bonus!
Here’s how I build a block. . .
Cut some batting squares a little bit bigger than the size you want your finished blocks to be. My finished blocks will be 10 inches square, which means I’d normally cut them 10 1/2 inches – but I cut mine 11 inches square to give myself a bit of wiggle room. That wiggle room lets you be a bit imperfect in your cutting – see how the fold in the batting made a little jagged pointy bit on the left side? That’s ok – it’ll get trimmed off. 🙂
Important! You must use 100% cotton batting. You’re going to press this a lot and anything with polyester in it will melt to your iron. I always use Warm & Natural – you can read my review of it here.
Pick a piece of fabric to be your center feature and cut it (roughly) into the shape you want. All of mine are four sides – but nowhere near perfect squares or rectangles. I used scissors (not rotary cutting tools) and just eyeballed everything. Slap that piece down in the middle-ish of a batting square.
Now pick another scrap of fabric. Trim it to match the width of the starter scrap, lay it face down over the starter scrap with the raw edges mostly lined up, and sew across the edge using 1/4 inch-ish seam allowance. You’re sewing through both pieces of fabric and the batting.
Flip that piece up and press it flat.
Now we’ll add another strip. I like to work clockwise, but it really doesn’t matter.
Lay a strip face down over both your earlier pieces and trim it (roughly) to fit. Sew it in place just like the first one. (You can click on the photo if you need to see it bigger.)
Flip that piece open and press it flat.
Keep working your way around that center, building up the size of your block. I added the zigzag piece next, then the skinny stripes.
Keep adding strips until the batting is completely covered.
Those first four red strips were pretty uniform, so it’s time for a skinnier strip. I like to keep things mixed up for more interesting blocks.
I also like to make sure some of my strips go slanty – so they’re thicker at one end and thinner at the other. To do that, I don’t line up the raw edges exactly – I let the new strip slope up or down a bit, like in the photo above.
See how that looks when it’s pressed open? It’s not the most efficient use of fabric, but I’m only wasting a tiny bit and I think it makes the block much more interesting.
Sometimes I use a new fabric with every strip and sometimes I’ll use the same fabric a few times in a row to build interesting shapes. Two consecutive strips of the same fabric makes an L. Three makes a U. And four makes a frame.
Sometimes I only have strips that are too short to reach all the way from edge to edge of the block – especially as the center section gets bigger.
When that happens, I just sew two strips together and use the new, longer strip in my piecing. Sometimes I use two strips of the same fabric, and sometimes I use different fabrics (like in the strip on the right in the photo above). It totally depends on my mood at the moment.
Keep going until your batting square is completely covered.
Here it is from the back. See how there’s fabric showing all around the edge of the batting? And look at the nice quilting already done – holding everything together. I’m going to back this quilt with cuddle fleece for special cuddly warmth. There are tips here for using cuddle fleece for the back.
Trim your block down to size from the back, so you can see that you’re getting batting in the entire block. I trimmed mine down to 10 1/2″ square.
And here’s the finished block!
In the very first photo I showed the blocks arranged in a checkerboard-ish pattern, with red blocks alternating with purple. I’m not sure yet what the final arrangement for the quilt will be – it kind of depends on how many blocks I end up with for each color. Here’s an alternate possibility where the blocks blend from one color to another.
Whatever arrangement I choose, the final quilt will be bright and cheerful and cuddly and warm – just what I want to give a child. 🙂
Update! You can see the finished free scrap quilt here. Along with showing the finished quilt, I also answered a lot of questions people had about the process. Click over to get more details.
A couple of final notes. . .
I think improvisational scrap blocks like this look best when you sort your fabrics a bit first. You can see that within the red blocks there’s a brick red block, a red and white block, two bright pink blocks, one light pink block, and several bright red blocks. Within the purples I have one magenta-ish purple block, three lighter purple blocks, and lots of dark purple blocks. Sticking to one shade or tone per block keeps a little order.
This would be a really fun way to make an I Spy quilt – with pairs of center pieces to match up. I have two of the larger blue/green stars and two of the girl in the blue tree.
Press all the seams. I’m pressing mine open for this quilt. I think it will make things simpler in the end.
Arrange your squares according to the diagram below.
For this block I sewed things up a little differently in order to keep the edges of my chunks of color perfectly straight, even if my seams weren’t lined up perfectly.
We’re going to sew the whole thing into three fat rwos, but we’re going to sew some parts of those rows into chunks first.
1. Sew up the two orange 3×3 squares and 1 orange 4×4 square.
2. Sew up two aqua 3×7 rectangles and two aqua 3×4 rectangles.
Arrange those chunks as you see below.
Now sew all those chunks into rows.
Finally – sew all those rows into one fabulous block. 🙂
Press all the seams. I’m pressing mine open for this quilt. I think it will make things simpler in the end.
Arrange your squares according to the diagram below.
For this block I sewed things up a little differently – mainly to keep the edges of my yellow squares perfectly straight, even if my seams weren’t lined up perfectly.
We’re going to sew the whole things into columns, but we’re going to sew some parts of those columns into chunks first.
1. Sew up the four all-green columns.
2. Sew the middle two all-green columns together.
3. Sew all the yellow squares into their 3×3 blocks.
4. Sew eight 1×3 green rectangles.
5. Sew four of the 1×3 green rectangles into two 2×3 green rectangles.
Arrange everything as you see below.
Now sew all those chunks into columns.
Finally – sew all those columns into one fabulous block. 🙂
I had to take a bit of a break from the Controlled Chaos while I made my daughter Jo a T-shirt quilt to take to school with her, but I’m back! I’m easing back into things with some simple wide stripes.
Ready to make block #7?
What You’ll Need
60 two-inch squares in color A (shown in blue)
40 two-inch squares in color B (shown in pink)
Instructions
Use 1/4″ seam allowances for all sewing.
Arrange your squares according to the diagram below and sew them together into rows.
Press all the seams. I’m pressing mine open for this quilt. I think it will make things simpler in the end.
Sew the rows together to make the finished block.
Here’s the exploded view. . .
Here’s what my seven blocks look like so far. . .
I’ve decided to make mine a largish lap-sized quilt for me to use on the couch. It’ll be 4 blocks wide and 5 blocks tall for a finished size of 60″ x 75″ – a little smaller than a twin quilt. And I’m going to hand-quilt it!
Everyone knows not to use your good fabric scissors on paper, right?
RIGHT?
Today I thought I’d go beyond that very basic info with some extra detail on how I manage all my scissors – including my fabric scissors. This is going to answer a few questions that I get all the time.
Do you use expensive scissors?
Nope. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of high quality tools. I KNOW that quality scissors are better than cheap ones. But I also know that I am terrible at things like. . . bringing scissors in to get them professionally sharpened.
Good quality scissors that are painfully dull because I don’t know how to sharpen them myself and I can’t seem to coordinate my life well enough to get them professionally sharpened are worse than cheap scissors.
I can get a decent pair of Fiskars sewing shears at any big box fabric or craft store for under $20 – and then replace them every year. More on that replacement in a bit. . .
Which scissors do you use for cutting fabric and paper together – like with fusible adhesive or freezer paper?
Ah – that brings me to The Great Scissor Rotation.
I keep three pairs of big scissors in my fabric room. (This is only about the big scissors (shears, if you want to get technical) – I also have spring-loaded snips at the sewing machine and an assortment of tiny scissors for precision work.)
My newest pair of scissors is for fabric only.
When I bring in a new pair, the old fabric scissors become the scissors I use for fabric fused to paper.
(Update! I’ve discovered some specialty scissors that I REALLY love for cutting applique pieces, so now I use these for that purpose exclusively, and I leave this step out of my rotation)
The old fabric-fused-to-paper scissors become my paper scissors.
My old paper scissors move into the kitchen for snipping herbs, cutting waffles into dipping strips, cutting open packaging, etc.
And my old kitchen scissors move into the toolbox for real heavy duty work.
The scissors that were in the toolbox are usually totally destroyed by this time and they finally go in the trash.
I buy a new pair of scissors about once a year. While that may seem wasteful at $20 a pair when I could buy a quality pair that will last a lifetime for just under $100 – every pair of scissors I bring in gets used for about five years. Not bad at all! And I never need to coordinate bringing them in to be sharpened. 🙂
I mentioned above that this rotation only applies to basic shears. I do have some other specialty scissors that I love and am very particular about.
By the way – because I know someone is going to ask. I do sharpen my kitchen knives – but sharpening scissors is a different matter, one that I’ve been told repeatedly is best left to professionals. The angle of the sharpening is very different and you need to get both blades to work together. It’s more complicated and beyond my rudimentary knife-sharpening skills.
Here are handy links to all the posts about quilting tools and supplies.
Want to learn how to make a quilt with an easy online workshop – totally free?
Sign up for Let’s Make a Quilt here. You’ll learn how to get started, the tools and supplies you’ll need, and how to make a quilt from start to finish using Quilt As You Go and applique with fusible adhesive.
It’s the easiest, most fun way to make an applique quilt. You can do it!
Applique a pretty butterfly with this free pattern!
Nothing creepy. A ladybug, a bee and a butterfly. Maybe a grasshopper and a worm.
In the end I decided to just make it a wild riot of colorful flowers – bug free.
But I kept thinking about the bugs. The zinnias in my garden and the butterfly bushes in my yard are in full bloom right now and they are covered with swarms of beautiful butterflies.
I realized that I could release a free butterfly pattern, scaled to match the blocks in the Wild Flowers quilt. That way you can substitute one (or more) butterfly blocks for any of the square blocks in the quilt.
Fun!
Of course, you don’t have to make a quilt. You could use this solo block pattern in a pillow, a tote bag, a tablet cover, a wall hanging or more. You could applique it on a finished T-shirt or on a tea towel.
You could also go totally quilt crazy and make a bunch of butterfly blocks in different colors and join them into one joyous, colorful quilt!
Have fun with it!
Want to see a mock up of the butterfly applique pattern mixed in with the flowers from the Wild Flowers pattern?
See it? I tweaked the color a bit in photo editing to make it stand out more, but you’d let it blend in real life. 🙂
This is easy peasy applique. All of the instructions use my favorite applique with fusible adhesive technique (with links to video tutorials, of course) but you could also use needle turn or freezer paper applique.
Materials Needed
For each block you’ll need an 11 inch square of fabric for the background, scraps of fabric for the butterfly and one sheet of fusible adhesive. (I usethis printable product – no tracing!)
If you’re doing Quilt As You Go you’ll also need an 11 inch square of cotton batting.
The image has already been reversed, so just trace or print.
Step 2
Rough cut around each shape.
Leave a little bit extra all the way around - a little extra extra (at least 1/4 inch) where there’s a dotted line - the inside edges of the wings where they’ll tuck under the body.
Step 3
Fuse each pattern piece to the wrong side of the fabric.
Step 4
Cut around each piece.
Cut directly on the solid lines. Leave a little seam allowance on the dotted lines – that’s where the inside edges of the wings will tuck under the main body piece.
Step 5
If you’re doing Quilt As You Go then you can quilt your block before adding the applique. So easy!
Cut your background block and your batting 11 inches square. Layer them together and quilt any pattern you like!
If you’ll do the quilting later, simply skip this step. (That’s what I did for my sample block – so you won’t see a quilted background in the following photos.)
Step 6
Peel off the paper backing and arrange the butterfly pieces on your background block. Tuck the edges of the wings behind the body, and the top wings behind the bottom wings.
Remember - all the dotted lines indicate where pieces tuck behind other pieces.
Fuse the pieces in place, following the package instructions for whatever brand of fusible adhesive you’re using.
Step 7
Stitch around all the pieces. I just did simple straight line stitching in black thread.
I love the cartoony effect.
This post has more information about outlining stitching your applique.
Done!
One free butterfly applique pattern becomes as lovely fabric butterfly block!
If you’re making one-block project, go ahead and finish it up!
If you’re making a bunch of butterfly blocks to join into a quilt - have fun!
