Quilting with my daughter

When I made my then five year old daughter a bed sized quilt, I understandably spent some extra time in my sewing room. In addition, I spent time choosing fabrics and planning the quilt.

Sydney's very first quilt

While in the fabric store she would often want to pick out fat quarters to buy. Finally I let her and it was with her purchase that she quilted for the first time.

Since then she has made a couple more. They were all made between the ages of five and six.

The method we used was that I cut four inch squares and she laid them out in a pattern. I pinned squares together and set up the machine for her. She sewed very slowly and carefully. I then pressed the seams and got the next row ready for her. She got to do what she wanted which was sew on the machine.

Later we wanted to make a bigger quilt for a doll and chose fat quarters with the purpose of make a quilt. She seemed to have a great sense of color and what would go well together. Because there were more squares, it could be bigger. I really like how she planned it out too.

After making her bigger quilt, she made a couple others as gifts for her friends' birthdays.

For each of these quilts we sewed the back to the front, right sides together and then turned and topstitched. Some my daughter used decorative stitching on top, others we just stitched in the ditch. For the big quilt I did free motion quilting for her.

For the most part we used fleece as the backing with no batting. The bigger quilt was the exception. I did use thin batting and a cotton print on the back.

Quilt for a boy doll, pieced fleece backing

Finding all the little quilts again was fun and I was happy to see I did make a label for her first quilt with her name and the year for the back.

After completing the little mug rugs, I could see making them with my almost eight year old. It would also provide a good lesson in bindings too.

Quilting with a young child is really neat and I look forward to doing it again with my next little girl.