Craft Project: Quilting with Cricut Maker

At the end of last year I bravely decided to attend a sewing workshop run by a talented local sewer to make my own Christmas stocking and despite having a phobia of sewing machines I really enjoyed the session so when the lady decided to run a quilting for beginners course I decided I wanted to face my fear head on and learn how to quilt!

At our first session, I was introduced to the prospect of measuring and cutting all my various squares of fabric in order to sew them together and make a fantastic first block design for my sampler quilt.

When browsing around for fabric I spotted some amazing tribal designs in shades of celadon and jade greens, anthracite, greys, beige, black and white which I fell in love with straight away! I also picked out some plain white and teal fabric to be my background colours and in order to balance out the eye-catching patterns.

I bought a mixed pack of fat squares to start my quilt off and when I started running out I decided to buy more fabric with the same tribal patterns but in a slightly different colour palette with shades of grey, beige, chocolate brown and white to add some more interest into the quilt. I also bought some dusky green background fabric to compliment the new fabrics.

I noticed that the majority of our first quilting session was taken up just by cutting out the shapes for one block and as I have decided to make 6 rows of 9 different designs for my quilt I foresaw many, many hours of dodgy line drawing and cutting ahead of me.

Although I understand that cutting the shapes by hand instils a sense of ownership and pride over what is being made, I have to admit I spent a lot of time in that first session thinking that there must be an easier way to ensure that the shapes were perfectly measured and cut rather than the somewhat wonky shapes I was cutting out by hand.

Luckily, I had recently been sent the Cricut Maker cutting machine which boasts the ability to cut fabric into precision shapes perfect for quilting so I decided to invest in a Cricut 12″ x 24″ fabric mat to allow me to cut numerous fabric shapes along with a few Quilting Cartridges in the Cricut Design Space for use in my sewing project.

With its rotary blade which cuts fabric effortlessly, the Maker has been a lifesaver. It has meant I have been able to spend much more time focusing on sewing my block designs together and not having to sit for hours with a ruler, pencil and pair of fabric scissors whilst hoping not to bodge it too much.

Using Design Space to draw out the shapes to cut into my fabric has been an easy operation. I mostly use my phone and either select an appropriately sized shape from my Quilting Cartridges or simply select a regular shape from the image library and draw out the desired size.

Then all I have to do is cut my fabric to the right size (12″ wide, the length doesn’t really matter) and lay it onto the tacky mat and smooth over to secure it. Then, simply set the Cricut to work – make sure the rotary blade is installed and you choose the correct material settings for your chosen fabric, mine has just been cotton, and boom! Perfectly cut out shapes ready to be made into a quilt.

Although my quilt blocks are still a little wonky (due to my lack of sewing experience not the lack of exact cutting!) I am really proud of what I have made so far. I am about half way through with another 4 block designs to make before I can sew all of the squares together and then turn it into a quilt. I will be sure to share my finished quilt once it has all come together.

What are you crafting at the moment?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.