Manly Plaid Homespun Scrap Quilt

I wanted to make my dad a lap quilt for his bed.  Something manly with no florals in it.  And not wanting to spend a ton of money to do it, I went through my fabric stash and pulled out every plaid I had minus the pinks, purples and oranges.  This is what I came up with.  A chunky quilt that was easy to piece together and suits my dad to a T.

The quilt top assembled fairly quickly.........

For the backing, I used a retired mattress pad my mom had given me.  I cut off the nylon netting from the sides and it was ready to go.........

I secured the old mattress pad to the living room floor using large safety pins that I stuck through the mattress pad, through the carpet and into the carpet pad.  The pins are left open, closing them would be too difficult.

I pinned the heck out of the quilt top, these pins are pinned through the top and bottom of the quilt and are fastened close.......

Riley........supervising my work !

Using this thick mattress pad did have its problems.  The best way to machine quilt it was to roll up the sides and work with one complete vertical section at a time.  I started in the middle and worked towards the right, then flipped the quilt and worked towards the right from the other direction.

I dropped my feed dogs, put on my free motion darning foot and got to work....

I kept my free motion quilting at a large scale since this project was so bulky.  It definitely took some hand, arm, shoulder and neck work to maneuver this through the machine!

For the binding I used left over scraps of the same fabrics.  Strips are cut to 1.5" thick.

Pressed in half lengthwise then top stitched to the front of the quilt and hand stitched to the back.

I ran it through a cycle of wash and dry to get this pretty puckering.....

All rolled up and ready to give to my dad.........

HE comes to my office 3 of 4 times a week, so this morning he got his quilt and is very happy!  It will be perfect for when he's surfing all the news talk channels on t.v.

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