About two and a half years ago I met my now fiance and he had a lot of pets. If you asked anyone I knew then if I was into these pets – they’d say heck no! But something told me this guy was worth the animal invasion – and he was. Anyway, when we met he had 2 dogs, a cat and a rabbit. It didn’t take long to get rid of the rabbit, one dog went with the ex and the cat stayed until I officially moved in. Well if you’ve followed along, that left us with one dog. A number I could handle – having never had any pets growing up and never wanting them either. Well over the past 2 years you might say I’ve fallen in love. With my fiancee, of course, but also with his dog – Pebbles.
I’ve fallen in love so much so that I felt the urge to first buy her that fabulous pink croc collar (complete with rhinestones), and second to make her a quilt for her crate. While on a shopping trip to Crate & Barrel, we spotted a neat plaid patchwork dog blanket and my fiance asked, with full puppy-dog eyes, if I could make something similar for Pebbles. Since I’ve been making rag quilts for my Etsy shop, that was the first thing that came to mind – I also thought it would a cozy bed for her to lie on at night. He wanted manly plaids so when I saw these fabrics while out shopping one day and they had pink and purple in them I picked them up and got started.
These yarn dyed brushed cotton plaids are perfect for rag quilt as they have a soft texture and loose weave that responds well to the ragging process. Now, because this is a dog blanket, I wanted the backing to be something quite sturdy and hefty. Luckily I had some black-brown denim in my stash that just happened to match my great fabric finds. I decided to add cotton batting (I used Warm and Natural because I had scraps on hand) between the fabric layers to make the blanket softer and cozier, but also to help prevent it from getting all bunched up at the back of her crate.
As you can see in the picture above, I attached the 3 layers of fabric (the plaid, cotton batting and denim) using diagonal stitching across each section of the quilt. When making rag quilts with cotton batting, make sure to cut the batting to the finished size of the quilt square and sandwich it before you sew your squares together. The diagonal stitching ensures the batting stays securely in place through usage and washing. Cutting the batting to the finished dimensions ensures you won’t see the batting poking out of the seam allowance that will be clipped and ragged.
Planning this quilt was super easy and fun. First I measured the dimensions of the bottom of her crate and added about 1 inch to that to get a finished size of 12″ x 20″. Then I took out my graph paper and got planning. I didn’t want super tiny squares because I wanted to be able to see the different fabrics through the ragging, but I also wanted small enough squares that the top would still be visually interesting. The picture above is my final result. Once I settled on a layout I used different coloured sharpies to layout the various fabrics I would use. This enabled me to picture the finished product well before cutting into my fabric. The numbers on the side of the plan are the various squares I would need from each fabric. In all, I used about 4″ by width of fabric of each plaid, and about 8″ by width of fabric of my denim. All you need for batting is the finished size of your quilt cut into corresponding squares to your quilt design.
Here’s the finished quilt before I clipped the seam allowance.
And here’s the finished quilt inside Pebbles’ crate – with her cozying up on it.
And because I can’t get enough of my cute little doggy, one more photo.
