Working with Flannel

Ellen, over at Wrap-Them-in-Love (a non-profit foundation) has received a request for 40 little quilts to go to the Philippines .  They asked for light weight quilts, just flannel on front and back, with no batting.

First, let me explain that I do not work with flannel.



Why I don't like flannel



But that having been said, I did once think I could make a baby quilt out of flannel and I bought a kit that was put together by a LQS.  It turned out the kit came with pre-cut small squares so that I couldn’t speed piece long strips then cut them with my rotary cutter and that slowed me down tremendously.   I had to sew together the little squares and make larger pieces so that I could pre-wash and THEN cut off all of the shreds so I was slowed down considerably more … At this point, of course, the solution was to quickly make my usual cotton (not flannel) quilt for the baby and put the kit away somewhere (wouldn’t that be your solution, too?!!).

I never thought I’d ever dig that kit out, but after receiving the note from Ellen, I knew I had to find it.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how far along I had gotten, so I just added two more borders, quilted it up and got it bound.

Quilted and Bound

With Polka Dot Back

It didn’t seem very light weight – maybe there are different weights of flannel – so I bought another piece of cute flannel with frogs and (after pre-washing) sewed a piece of whole cloth (regular woven cotton) to the flannel backing.  That seemed lighter to me.



Froggie Flannel



With another polka dot back

I’ll send both on to Ellen and see if either will do for the Philippines request.  I'm sure the one that might be too heavy will be suitable for her to send to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation,  which they also support.  So I’m sure both will be put to good use somewhere in the world.

And the upside is that a long-forgotten UFO is complete and out the door.  Thanks to the 2011 UFO Challenge over at Patchwork Times, I’m now more likely to think of using some of my UFOs even if it means digging them out from their deepest hiding places!  I had already finished the number selected this month - #9 on my list was just to bind and send off a scrappy quilt that used up leftover binding strips.  I wrote about it in this post, so I was going to have to substitute another UFO and this fit the bill perfectly.   Glad to keep things moving along in the sewing room!