Quilted fabric works great for many projects including bags, pouches and clothing. Here are some simple instructions of how to quilt your own fabric.

Supplies:
• Main Fabric. We used Coming up Roses
• Lining Fabric. We used Colorworks
• Batting – we used Fusible Fleece but a regular (non- fusible) batting also works
• Matching Thread
• Washable Marking Tool- we used a chalk roller
• Curved Safety Pins
• Sewing Machine with a Quilting Sewing Machine Needle
• Iron (if using a fusible batting)
• Ruler to Mark Quilting Lines

This first step is optional. If you are working with a fusible batting, you will want to press that to the backside of your main fabric. Make sure to lift and place your iron instead of moving the iron back and forth.

Next you will want to mark your quilting lines on the right side of your outside fabric at your desired distance. For this sample, lines were drawn that were 2” apart using the quilt ruler and chalk roller. If you choose to use a wash away or disappearing marking pen, you should always test this on a scrap to make sure it will completely disappear.

Now you want to layer your pieces as follows: lining (right-side down), batting (if not using a fusible type) and outside fabric (with right-side facing up). Using curved safety pins, pin through all your layers, making sure your pins are between your marked quilting lines and going through all your layers. As I was using a fusible batting, I placed pins every 4” or so down each column and then offset the next line of pins at similar distanced intervals. If you are using a regular batting, you may want to place more pins to securely hold everything together.

At your sewing machine, stitch down your marked lines, working from the centre of your project outwards. This will help keep the project from shifting all to one side, which could happen if you quilted this from one side to the other. Depending on the thickness of your project you may want to use a slightly longer stitch length. For this example, I used a stitch length of 3 instead of 2.5.

Here’s are some close ups of the stitching shown from both sides of the project.

Stay tuned for when we take these two quilted pieces and make them into a bag.