Tutorial: DIY Play Quilt

Today I'm going to show you how to make a simple play quilt (click here to see the one I made). One of the things I love about this project is that there's not a lot of intricate piecing, which could make this a good beginner project. There's a lot of room for creativity in terms of what you want to include in your quilt, which means you can tailor it fit your skill level. 

Here's what you will need:

1 yard of main quilt fabric

1 yard of backing fabric

Quilt batting

Miscellaneous scraps of fabric (different types and textures)

Miscellaneous accessories (Velcro, ribbons, crinkly cereal bag, etc)

Fabric for binding

Step One: First, you will need to plan your quilt. I'll show you what I did, but you can get creative and do whatever you want. You can omit blocks that seem to difficult for you, or add other blocks that you've thought of on your own. Here's the general layout of your quilt. It may help to print this out and jot down your ideas in each block.

Notice how there is one large block in the middle, and six small blocks on each end. Look at the following photo to see what materials I chose for each block.

1. Chunky sweater
2. Cotton with two cotton ruffles
3. Textured felt
4. Cotton with crinkly cereal bag underneath
5. Textured upholstery fabric
6. Cotton with three ribbon loops
7. Minky fabric
8. Cotton with ribbon scraps
9. Polar fleece
10. Cotton with Velcro tabs
11. Terry cloth (hand towel or wash cloth)
12. Flannel shirt

Some other ideas could be faux fur, faux sheepskin, velour, or satin. If you're not too picky on colors, it can be helpful to check your fabric stash, or see what you have around the house, before heading to the fabric store. You might be surprised at what you can find. The only things I brought for this part of the quilt were the textured felt and the minky fabric. Once you head to the fabric store, the clearance section and remnant bins. Each block is only a 5" square (that's 5.5" including seam allowance), so you will only need a small amount. Another thing to note is that it can be tricky sewing several different types of fabric together, especially if some are stretchy and some are not. It can be helpful to buy some fusible interfacing to iron onto the back of your stretchy fabrics, such as the sweater and flannel. This will give them more structure and make them easier to sew.

Step two: Now that you have all your fabrics picked out, it's time to start cutting. Using your main fabric, cut a 30.5x30.5 inch square. That's a thirty inch square with a 1/4 inch seam allowance on all sides. Cut a 5.5 inch square out of each fabric that you've chosen for the small squares. This is a good time to iron your fusible interfacing onto your stretchy squares. See below for an example of my sweater square with interfacing on the back. NOTE: If you are making any sort of square that will need to be cut and sewn back together (such as the ribbon loops), remember to take into account the extra seam allowance. If you need more help with this, continue reading.

Step three: Now it's time to start constructing your small squares. Set aside the ones that are already finished, such as the sweater, fleece, minky, etc. Let's start with the crinkly square. I recommend using an empty, clean cereal bag because those have a nice crinkle to them. Cut two squares that are at least one inch larger than your fabric square. Place your fabric square down, wrong side up, and lay your two pieces of cereal bag on top. Now, pin the corners of your cereal bag squares to the corners of the fabric square. Since the cereal bag squares are bigger, they will puff up in the middle. Starting on one side of the square, make a pleat in your cereal bag squares and pin it to the fabric square, so that the sides are the same length. Do this for all four sides. The middle of your cereal bag squares should look wrinkly and puffed up. Once all four sides are pinned, sew the three layers together close to the outside edge. It will not look very neat underneath, but don't worry, because you won't see that side. All of those wrinkles will make your square extra crinkly, and babies are all about crinkly! See the picture below for a visual of what I'm describing.

If you want to make a block with ruffles on it, check out this tutorial on how to make ruffles. In this tutorial, she leaves the edges of the ruffles unfinished. You may want to consider hemming them, or they will fray over time. For my ruffles, I cut my fabric twice as wide as I wanted it, folded it in half right sides together, and sewed it shut. Then, I turned it inside out so that the seam was on the inside. So, following this tutorial, make as many ruffles as you want, of whatever size you want. Once you're done, sew them onto your square.

Let's talk about the ribbon squares now. For the flat ribbon square, I chose four pieces of different ribbons and simply laid them on the square and sewed down the edges. For the ribbon loops, it gets a little trickier. My ribbon loops are on a diagonal line, because I was triangular scraps from another quilt, but a straight line would definitely be easier, so that's what we're going to do. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you would need to take into account your seam allowance for this part? If you cut a 5.5 inch square in half, then sew it back together with a 1/4 inch seam, you'll end up with one side shorter than the other. So cut a 5.5x6 inch square, and cut it in half so you'll have two 5.5x3 inch rectangles. Lay your two rectangles right sides together. Then cut small pieces of ribbon and fold them in half. Insert them between the two rectangles so that the raw edges of the ribbon match up with the raw edges of your rectangles. Pin them in place. Then, sew them all together 1/4 inch from the edge.  Open your square and press (iron) your seam flat, but but careful not to smush your ribbons.

The last square I'm going to talk about is the Velcro tabs square, which might be the trickiest. Start by deciding how big you want your tabs to be. Using a scrap of fabric, cut a rectangle that, when folded in half, is larger than your strip of Velcro all the way around (see figure below). Fold your rectangle in half, right sides together, and sew along two edges, just like the dotted lines in the illustration below. Turn your rectangle inside out and press. You'll have a rectangle with three finished sides and one unfinished side. Sew one side of your Velcro to this rectangle.

Decide where on your square you want your Velcro tabs to be, and sew down the other half of your Velcro strip. Stick the two pieces of Velcro together, but don't worry about sewing the tab down yet. Just make sure the edge of the tab is hanging off the edge of the square a little bit. When you sew your squares together in the next step, the end of your Velcro tab will get sewn into the seam. Here's a close up and what it should look like.

Step four: Start putting everything together! Divide your small squares in half and sew them together with a 1/4 inch seam. You should have two strips of six squares each. Take your strips and sew one on each end of your main quilt fabric. And now, your quilt top is done!

Step five: Quilt and bind as desired! If you're new to quilting and have no idea what that means, I recommend checking out the Beginning Quilting Series over at Diary of a Quilter. I'd read the whole series before even doing your quilt top because she has a lot of helpful hints. You can quilt this however your want, but I did criss-crossing diagonal lines across the main quilt fabric, and then stitched in the ditch for all of the small squares. I also did a little extra quilting around the areas I knew would be getting some extra love, like the Velcro tabs and the ribbon loops.

So there you have it! Now you know how to make your own play quilt! Thanks for reading!