Hello Crafters! Happy New Year to all! I hope you guys had a great holiday.
Here's my first tutorial for 2016, how to make a Rag Quilt. :) If you are like me, and love handmade quilts but you don't want to make them yourself because it's a lot of work and time consuming, rag quilt are the best and more simple thing to make for yourself or for someone else. It is so easy to make and the only time consuming part of this project is clipping the seams if you are going to make a big quilt like mine. Here's my first Rag Quilt that I made for my daughter and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's so cuddly and so soft. My husband loves it too and he wants me to make one for our bed. My mom made two rag quilts a long time ago out of old denim fabric and corduroy fabric. I think I'm going to try the denim for my next rag quilt project, perfect to use for camping. But for this quilt that I am going to show you I used flannel fabric. Let's get started! :)
Materials you will need:
Flannel fabrics Thread Iron and Ironing board Scissors Spring scissors Rotary cutter and Gridded cutting mat Ruler Pins Sewing machine 
First, decide how many different patterns of fabric you would like to use and how big you want your quilt. My daughter picked these five beautiful different patterns of fabrics. She likes to have four different prints of fabrics on the front and one print for the back of the quilt. But, you could use the same pattern on the back and the front if you like.
For the middle layer I'm using flannel as well (plain light color), but you could use a cotton batting. 
Before you start your rag quilt; Do NOT wash the fabric before use, if you are using flannel fabric.
Iron all your fabrics before cutting. I cut out 8" squares of fabric for the front and back fabric, and 6" squares for the middle layer, but you can cut your middle layer the same size as your front and back fabric, but I prefer a smaller square in the middle. 
Once you cut all your squares, its time to make the square sandwich. Take your backing piece right side down, then lay the middle layer on top of it, then take your top piece right side up. You don't have to pin them together , but you can if you want to. Do this all your square fabrics.
After you sandwiched all you squares, sew an "X" from corner to corner.
To save you some time and thread, sew from one corner diagonally down to the other corner of each square and don't stop sewing. Do a chain stitch by placing the corner of the next square and continue sewing. You will end up with a long chain of squares. Cut the thread in between each squares and do the same thing again, sew a diagonal line in opposite direction. You will making a X in each squares. 
Once you have all of your squares quilted, I suggest to either get on the floor or go to the table that has a really large space to lay out all your squares in rows how you want them.
You want your seams to be on the top. Take the first 2 squares and put the wrong sides together and pin, and continue with the remaining squares until the row is complete, and sew from the top to the bottom with a 1" seam allowance. Make sure all seams are facing the same way.
This is what my first row looked like, and continue doing this until you finish all your rows. Remember, your rows will be smaller when you're done stitching them together due to the seam allowance.
Now, once you have all your rows sewn, go back on to the floor or table and lay out all your rows. To pin the rows together, match the seams, press one seam towards to the left and one seam to towards to the right and pin and sew with 1" seams. You will be sewing through a lot of layers, so go slowly.
After you have sewn all the rows together, sew a 1" seam around the entire quilt. When you reach the corner keep the needle in the down position, rotate the quilt 90 degrees and continue sewing until you've sew the entire quilt. Don't forget to back stitch from the beginning to finish.
It's time to snip all seams. Get as close to the seam as possible without snipping through it. But, if you accidentally cut the stitches it is easy to fix by sewing over your mistake. Warning, this is time consuming part if you are making big rag quilt like mine. It took me almost three hours to snip all the seams.
You're almost done. This is what your rag quilt should look like before washing, front and back. All seams are sniped on one side and the other side has the traditional quilt look (it's hard to see on the picture because I used one pattern fabric).
The last thing you have to do is wash and dry your quilt. If you made a larger quilt like mine I recommended that wash and dry your quilt at the commercial laundromat. 
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