My Crafty Teen's Bandana Quilt

I asked my (freshly turned) 13-year-old what should the next project from my stash be. I suggested valences for the kitchen windows. She suggested we do something from her stash. She is my crafty one, and has her own project box. She has sewn some things before, so I told her to go find something. She came back with four bandanas and some fleece, and said she wanted to make a quilt.

She reminded me that last summer, there was a bandana quilt on display at our local JoAnn store for a kid's quilting class, and that she had asked me to take a photo of it with my phone. I went searching through through the photos and I did find this photo of the bandana quilt.

Quilt on display at JoAnn.

The quilt seems simple enough. Four identical blocks of four triangles each.

We scanned the fabrics into Electric Quilt to play around with the colors. Since we only scanned a portion of each bandana, the bandana's design could not be fully shown in EQ, but the colors could be shown well. My daughter likes to do things herself, including using EQ to design this quilt.

Quilt Block

She said she wanted to give this quilt to her 7-year-old sister, so she got her little sister's input on how the colors should be. My 7-year old daughter came up with the following design. She liked the blocks rotated so that the pink and yellow are in the center to form a pinwheel.

Quilt design created by my 13 and 7-year old daughters.

We set to work. My 13-year-old was the stitcher, and I would cut the fabric for her.

Fabric pieces laid out on cutting table.

TO MAKE THE QUILT TOP:
- She sewed the pairs of pink and yellows first, then the blues and greens together. Sew with right sides of the fabric together, 1/4" seams. Press open.

Sew four of the pink/yellow.

Sew four of the blue/green.

- Then she sewed each pair of halves (pink/yellow to a blue/green) to complete the four identical blocks. Sew right sides together, 1/4" seams. Press open.

Complete four of these blocks.

- A pair of blocks were stitched together along the yellow/pink seam. She did this twice - so she had two rows (of two blocks each). Sew right sides together again. Press open.

Complete two of these rows.

- The two rows of two blocks were stitched together along the yellow/pink seam to make the four-block quilt top. Sew right sides together once more. Press open.

Chain stitching away.

TO COMPLETE THE QUILT:
- She added some batting, and used the pink fleece for the backing.
- She lay the batting down on the table first, then the fleece on top of it.
- She then lay the quilt top (bandana fabric), face-down, on top of the fleece so their right-sides face together.
- Trim the edges clean and pin all around.
- She stitched the outside edges together and left a small opening to turn it out, pillow-case style.
- The opening was then hand-stitch closed.

Watching her embroidery finish for a quilt label.

- She embroidered and cut a label for her quilt from an extra bandana that I had. Hand stitch it onto the back.
- After top-stitching around the outside edges, and stitching the seams in the ditch, she was done!