As I mentioned in the Sunday Stitch a week or so back, I recently finished a quilted blanket for my cousin Raegan and her new hubby, Jake. I love giving handmade things for weddings. The item is slightly less likely to end up in a garage sale in 5 years.

The happy couple got engaged in May and decided in June that they wanted to marry in July. And no, calm down, no shotguns were involved. Well, there were some in the decor (they got married in a beautiful barn) but nobody was wielding them at the groom.

I had already decided when they got engaged that I wanted to make them a quilt, but with only 3 weeks until the wedding, I needed to whip one up in a hurry. This was the perfect project because it's wonderful and personalized and able to be knocked out in a short amount of time. It's a lap sized quilt, so it's big enough to be usable for couch cuddling but small enough to not make you hate your life.

If you've never made a quilt and want to get your feet wet, this is the perfect project to start with.

THE GOODS

1.5 yards quilter's weight cotton for the front
1.5 yards quilter's weight cotton for the back
Scrap fabric for monogram
Low loft quilt batting - throw sized (about 44" x 54")
Quilt binding (or 1/2 yard fabric to make your own)
Coordinating thread
Quilter's safety pins
Fabric disappearing ink pin or painter's tape

STEP ONE: The monogram. Use your computer and printer to make a large letter in the font of your choice, or just wing it on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Pin it to your scrap accent fabric and cut it out.

I started with a print out, but decided I wanted it larger; my final letter size was about 9" x 12". I made sure to line the letter up so the print of my fabric looked just right on it.

Pin it to your quilt, and using a zigzag stitch, attach it to your front fabric. You would be wise to play with this with a couple of scrap pieces first to get the size and spacing of your zigs and your zags. Here's the settings I used.

STEP TWO: Iron your front and back fabrics. Lay the back fabric right side down on your floor (wrong side up). Smooth it out flat. Lay your batting on top, overlapping the edges just a bit. Then smooth out your top fabric on top, right side up. You're making a quilt sandwich here. Try as best you can to get everything straight and aligned.

Starting at the center and swirling out from there, start pinning your layers together, smoothing out gently as you go. Once you're done, flip it over to be sure you don't have any weird wrinkles. That would be sad. As frustrating as it is, fix it now.

STEP THREE: The actual quilting. I did straight line quilting because that's what I'm most comfortable with. You could do free motion or other more intricate patters if you want to go crazy.

If you don't own this thing, run out to your fabric store and get it immediately. The best $5 you'll ever spend. It's called something like a quilt line spacer (or something). You slide it into your foot and once you have one straight line, you will use this to space all remaining lines. It's WAAAAAY faster than drawing out all of your lines.

monogrammed quickie quilted blanket tutorial

I got my first line marked with painter's tape, straight stitched it, and then spaced all of my remaining lines 1-3/4" apart. That's not a magic quilter's number or anything, it just looked right with my geometric pattern. Choose something between 1" and 6" or so if you aren't sure.

You'll need to roll up the quilt as you go to fit it through the throat of your machine. If it gets hard to move through, you can use painter's tape to keep the roll taught.

I take my pins out as I go. Some people leave them in until the end as long as they aren't in the way of your needle. It's up to you.

Once you're all quilted, trim all of the edges. A cutting mat, rotary cutter, and T-square will be your friend here. If you're going to dive into the world of quilting, it's a worthwhile investment.

STEP FOUR: Time to bind this sucker! You can buy pre-made quilt binding, which is what I would recommend if you're new to this game. If you're feeling lucky, you can make your own like I did. This tutorial is my favorite.

I have a machine that does embroidery (lucky me) so I added an extra special touch and monogrammed the binding with the happy couple's name and wedding date. Good luck selling this at a garage sale in 5 years. When it was time to bind, I placed this piece first to make sure it ended up exactly where I wanted it.

This tutorial is great for showing you how to bind a quilt, and especially how to navigate the tricky corners. This was the first time I actually went to the effort of hand binding and it was worth it. It looks sooooo much better than every other binding attempt I've ever made. But it takes quite a bit longer. I brought it with me on a road trip and worked on it as long as I had daylight. It probably took 3 hours, but I'm not very fast with a needle and thread. It was oddly therapeutic, though, so I wasn't trying to rush through it.

Done and done. Isn't it adorable? With that big ol' letter T, I'm not going to lie, I was tempted to keep this puppy for myself and buy R&J a Target gift card. But I did the right thing and gifted it. Stupid conscience.

I got word that the happy couple is fighting over who gets to use the quilt. I may have caused their first marital disagreement. Sorry, guys. It's just big enough for movie-snuggling, so you can share.

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