Quilts Made of Squares- Flannels, Rayons and Cotton

The girls have been coming to after school sewing classes in DUMBO for a year now (for some 2 years), but we have never made a quilt!

Because we are quilting novices everyone start by making a 12x12" square pattern piece. We were going to start XS with just 12 pieces; All the girlies were NOT happy with that, so we bumped it to 16 pieces. We used Extra-Loft full sized batting, and cut them in quarters. The batting ended up being a few inches too big on one side and I had to cut everything to fit at the end. 

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I had them all start by picking fabrics they liked together, and that would match their room. They thought about how the fabrics would look together. They were given two options- to cut pieces that fit the 12x12" squares or to take many smaller pieces and patchwork them together to fit into the 12x12" pattern. I encouraged them to get creative with their fabric choices. 
After they had their pieces cut out, we laid everything out to see how they wanted their layout. We started by sewing one strip of 4 fabrics at a time, trying our best to keep the lines straight/seam allowances even. Then they sewed their 4 strips together. This completed the top of our quilt. 

They chose a backing fabric (some chose 2 or 3!) and stitched everything together, turned it right-side-out and closed up the opening.

We finished the quilts by stitching around the outside one full time to make it look nice and neat. I am so impressed with all the thought and hard work all the girls have put into their quilts.