Scrap-Happy Rag Quilt

This quilt began with the purchase of some vintage cloth squares from etsy. (Please click on all the images to enlarge them).

They were once put together as a children's cloth book that someone had made a long time ago.
Here are photos of the animal squares I bought.

They were as cute as can be. The black words needed to be reworked on some and they had various stains from age. Each square was backed with red cloth like you see in the last photo.

I didn't want to take apart the squares so I just worked on embroidering the words with black floss in the worst areas. So the backs had all the black thread showing from my touch ups. I didn't want to mess with reworking the borders of each animal. I left them just as they were for the most part.

Then I decided to use some dresden plate scraps which I had taken off a badly torn quilt my Mom had given me from Grandma's house. After Grandma died she had many quilts and scrap quilts which she probably purchased from garage sales.

Each dresden plate was huge with big yellow circles in the middle.
 Here's three I still have left.
I hand-sewed these to the backs of the squares, completely covering the red fabric and black thread that was now on the squares.
I folded around the dresden plates to the front of the squares and tried to "border" each animal  with the beautiful fabric scraps.
(These dresden plates were made from cotton feed sack cloth with the most amazing prints you've ever seen! They just don't make awesome prints like these anymore.)

So, after I had all 12 squares done I needed to attach them together.

(I am not a quilter. I do have a sewing machine that my Mom handed down to me when she got a nice new one. However, me and this old machine have a hate - hate relationship. I don't think I would ever put myself through trying to use that thing ever again.)

So, I had to do all this by hand.

I have no idea how to put together a quilt. I hate math. Measuring is never gonna happen for me either. Never. So don't even try to bring it up. Never. Ever. Ever.

I found an old baby blanket at Goodwill which was made from a soft cotton fabric and had goofy clowns all over it doing silly things. It was only $1.99 so I got it and took it home. I had intended to use it as the backing. But then I realized that you wouldn't be able to see the awesome dresden plates I had sewed to the back. Only the bended over scraps in the front.

So then I knew I was going to have to totally cut up the clown fabric, roll over the fabric, and then hand sew the squares together in grids. So that's what I did.
No, it's not perfect. It's lumpy, scrunchy, tattered, and wonderful.
I love how it turned out!

Now, the backs had the dresden plates on them, remember? Well, each center was a big yellow circle. So I thought I should sew something inside each one.

I went to Goodwill again and found another absolutely wonderful old fabric with jungle animals on it. It looks to be about from the 60s.



It's super long like it came right off a fabric bolt. It had never been used but it still had some age stains where it was folded even after washing twice. But I just needed to cut the cute animal faces so I could sew them into the circles.



So this is the back. I had to repeat the lion and a monkey.

I'm so happy it's done. I have calloused fingertips from all the sewing.
It's measures 27 inches wide by 37 inches long. It's perfect for a crib.

I'm still gonna sew on some kind of tag. I worked on this so much I figure I better make sure I get the credit. LOL!

Here's two last shots of the front and back.