Quilted Wall Hanging for Nursery

Finished Wall Hanging in the Nursery

Although this project will not be for sale on Far Beyond, I wanted to include a step by step documentation of the process. If the quilted wall hanging is something that customers want, I would be able to print my art on fabric and put it as the center panel, much like the big heart in this piece. Sorry the photo quality is so bad - I was too lazy to pull out the real camera, and resorted to using my phone.

I have a super-cute sheet set for my 2 year old in all kinds of funky heart and stripe prints. It came with 3 pillow cases, and after just a couple washes, one of them got a small tear from the machine (I said cute, not high quality). I could have stitched it up, but since I really didn't need all three of the pillow cases, I stashed it away in the scrap pile along with the coordinating bed skirt that doesn't work on my daughter's bunk beds.

When I found out baby 2 was a girl, I knew for sure that I wanted the girls to share a room when they were old enough, so I decided to re-use the baby linens from my first daughter with a new twist. When they combine rooms, their decor will match, and in the meantime I saved a pretty penny on crib sheets. For the twist, I dove in the scrap pile and found the pillowcase and bed skirt.

I started by turning the bed skirt into a very simple valance with some $1 ribbon and a $3 curtain rod I got at Walmart (why oh why do they have to be so temptingly cheap?). I also recovered an IKEA pillow in the same fabric for the rocking chair and added that to a pillow I already had from the old nursery bedding.

Pillows & Valance

After the paint, bedding and furniture came together, I saw an opportunity for something to hang over the crib. At first I hung a large framed print. What was I thinking? Baby will pull that down on herself in a hot minute. Something fabric this way comes...

Quilts have a rich heritage in American culture, and also in my own history. My grandmother, God rest her sweet soul, was my teacher in all things sewing. Every time I pull out the sewing machine, or even just a needle and thread, I hear her advice. Some of our favorite projects were quilts. Starting with simple quilts where my contribution was only to cut the squares that had been marked by Grandma, all the way up to my last quilt that I completed on her old sewing machine: a bed cover for my first dorm room.

Years later, when she passed, my grandfather mailed me a quilt that she had made after I had left home and gotten married. The note from Grandpa said that she made the quilt for my first baby. Though Grandma was gone before my first child was born, I treasure the pictures of my daughter, only two weeks old, smiling on a backdrop of fabric swatches, cut loving for her by her great-grandmother.

Great-Grandma's Quilt

Looking at my coordinating fabric scraps and thinking about how, to me, a quilt is the perfect way to welcome a new baby, I pulled out the paper and pencil. I wanted something small, with ribbon loops on the top to hang it from a matching curtain rod like it's predecessor, the valance. I took inventory, chopped up the 3 different fabrics that made up the pillow case and based all my measurements on the size of the big heart and the width of the smallest scraps. The heart was 15 inches square and the scraps were 7 inches at their narrowest point. To make my plan work, all the surrounding smaller squares would be 5 inches, making the math simple.

Check out the the photos after the jump to see the steps I took: from an old pillowcase and bed skirt to what I hope to be a treasure for my newest daughter. Thanks for reading!

"The Plan" - This is how I draw out just about everything I do.

1. After measuring what I had to work with, I drew out my plan. Since returning to the world of sewing, this is how I've been planning out all my projects. I don't do anything very complicated, so a simple sketch keeps me from make a measuring mistake.

My fabric scraps, foreshadowing their new purpose. They're stoked.

2. Using Bristol Board (thick posterboard), I made a 5" square and traced my squares directly onto my pattern with a regular ink pen. On the stripes, I turned the fabric pattern so that the stripes were diagonal. This left a lot of waste fabric, but I loved how the diagonal stripes mirrored the diagonal brushmark in the heart. I cut out all the pieces and laid them out.

Front of quilt, sewn together and ready for backing and fill.

3. I loaded my sewing machine with a light blue top thread and a hot pink bobbin, which I kept for the whole project (it's a funky quilt - matching is not the goal!)  I pinned the smaller squares to each other into rows and sewed them together with a 1/4" seam, then ironed those new seams flat. Pin and sew those new rows to the big middle square, iron again, and front is finished.

Whip stitch. No one said I was perfect.

4. For the backing fabric of the quilt, I used the plain white cotton from the base of the bed skirt. It was super thin and very cheap, but it's perfect for this purpose. I cut the back with a little extra allowance around all the edges (about 1/2"), then I laid the quilt on top of my backing fabric with the "good sides" facing in towards each other. Using a long metal ruler, my rotary cutter (looks like a pizza cutter) and a cutting board, I trimmed the excess to make sure that the front and back lined up well. Without moving the fabric, I pinned along all 4 edges, sewed with a 1/4" seam (leaving a small space to flip and insert batting), flipped the whole thing inside out through my opening and ironed flat. I cut the batting about a 1/2" smaller than the sewn quilt,  slid it in through the opening, then spread it flat and pinned it in place through all 3 layers. I had to use polyfil as batting, since my favorite Raw Cotton doesn't lay flat. While everything was tacked together with my straight pins, I whip stitched the opening shut by hand (see photo.)

Tacking the layers together with a cross stitch, front.

Reverse of tacked quilt.

5. Next, I used embroidery thread to tack all the layers together with an old-school oversized cross stitch. I only did one cross stitch per square, including the big center square.

6. Finally, I took some ribbon I found in the dollar section of Target and hand stitched 4 simple ribbon loops across the top of the quilt to hang it from the curtain rod. I covered the edges of the ribbon and my ugly stitching with some purely decorative buttons, and I sewed through all 3 layers with each stitch to try to keep it flat on the wall.

Finished Wall Hanging!

7. After hanging the curtain rod and quilt up on the wall, I was pretty pleased! It doesn't hang as flat as a store-bought quilt, (partly b/c it's suspended out from the wall a bit) but that's part of the "artisan quality" that I love in handmade projects.

And now my nursery is ready for baby! Good thing, considering she's supposed to arrive in about 3 weeks. Let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification.