Do you love to collect scraps of fabrics or older fabrics which have a vintage look? Do you believe in going green and recycling? If you said yes to both of these questions, then those fabric scraps or older fabrics are what you need to create vintage looking rag quilts.

I am sure we all remember growing up watching our grandmothers, mothers, and aunts using old and used fabrics. The reasons for this would be to save on the cost of buying fabrics and secondly to recycle old fabrics. The rags or fabric patches used in their quilts would be of different designs, colors and materials available at the time. The entire quilt would then be hand sewn prior to the widespread use of the sewing machine.

Quilting nowadays has become very easy and fun, especially rag quilting. Earlier quilters would spend days sewing these blankets and then snipping edges of the blocks in quilts to get that frayed, old vintage look. Now with AccuQuilt GO!® dies, you save the time of cutting those blocks as well as snipping the edges. You eliminate the hassle of hand-cutting the fringe. You can create a baby rag quilt or a tote bag in one day. In addition, larger rag quilts can be an easy weekend project. AccuQuilt GO! dies are available in different shapes and designs that you could use to get the design you’re looking for.

Rag quilts no longer have to be a simple quilt. You can create a nine patch or even an appliqué designed quilt by using GO!® rag shapes like the flowers, circles, hearts, and stars. You can even use other GO! appliqué shapes to use inside the rag squares.

Rag quilts are prominently made using flannel or fleece; however, you can also use cotton fabric depending on your projects like a tote bag, handbag, lap quilt, or baby quilt.

As far as the construction of rag quilts projects go, you have to construct each block of a rag quilt before you put the entire quilt together. The process is pretty simple and even a beginner can create a beautiful tote or quilt easily.You can sandwich the batting between the two fabric pieces or choose not to use batting if you desire a quilt that is not too thick. For the 5 1/4" size rag square, you will need to cut one piece of fabric for the quilt top, another fabric scrap for the backing fabric, and a 3 1/4" sized square for the batting. Keep in mind that the measurement for the batting square excludes the fringe. Then place the right side of backing square face down. Place batting square on top of the backing square and finally lay the right side of main fabric face up. Stitch the three fabric squares together with a X design sewing from corner to corner. Once you have completed this, you can begin to construct your quilt using the rag squares you’ve already put together. You can also find the video tutorials of these instructions below.

GO! Dies

GO! Projects

Studio Dies