How I make patchwork cot quilts…

I use a very old sewing machine working on a very large oak table which my family's not allowed to eat at any more! Fabric is my main love - all the different vibrant colours and prints. I buy fabric from online shops obsessively (www.cottonpatch.co.uk), and in my nearest fabric shop, and shop in local charity shops for suitable cotton dresses, skirts and shirts. I also sometimes dye fabrics and/or decorate them with fabric paints. A very important factor, I've found, is to have lots of time, peace and quiet, someone to hold your small baby whenever possible, and some nice music to sing along to. If you get all these factors right, making quilts can be very rewarding.

Selecting the fabrics for the quilt is my favourite bit! It's the really creative part where I can bring my individual style and love of colour, and spend hours playing around trying colours out against each other. Spending quite a lot of time at this stage makes all the difference between a beautiful quilt and one which looks as though it was thoughtlessly jumbled up from whatever was lying around. I pre-wash my fabrics before cutting them up - especially the charity shop items - and iron everything to make sure it's OK to use. I think it's really important to keep the working area clean and make sure my hands are washed before I touch any fabrics.

Once I've decided on the mix of fabrics, I use a template to cut 5 inch squares and start arranging the pieces. Often I completely change my mind about the mix of colours and spend ages replacing and re-arranging the squares until I feel I've got it right. It's often best to leave them lying out for a while to view them in sunlight and artificial light as this can change the relative colour values of the fabrics.

The great thing about patchwork is how you can make use of relatively small pieces of fabric that wouldn't be much use in a single large project - and that makes it ideal for recycling or 'upcycling' fabrics. Indeed, patchwork must be among the oldest cottage industries as people used to 'make do and mend' from older scraps. There are hundreds of possible shapes, sizes, colours and patterns to make any design you choose, often using variations of patchwork 'blocks'. I prefer sewing pieces together using a sewing machine rather than paper-piecing (although the traditional paper-piecing technique is use to make the patchwork balls as these cannot be easily made by a sewing machine).

I like a lot of colour and variety in a quilt so I often use 35 different fabrics in a cot quilt, plus a contrasting edging. I try to balance the lighter and darker fabrics across the quilt to avoid stronger colours bunching together and overwhelming the rest of the quilt. I might try to have roughly half the colours in a lighter shade and half darker, or to pick up particular colours throughout the quilt so it seems cohesive. I like to mix larger prints with smaller patterns, and never include plain fabrics in the main design as I enjoy how the patterns respond to each other. My aim is to get the colours and patterns to 'pop' visually, then I know I've got it right.

I sew the squares into rows, and then iron from the back making sure all the seams are ironed flat in the same direction. The next row then needs to be ironed with the seams in the other direction, so they lie flat when the rows are stitched together. The rows are lined up, then one row is turned over its neighbour so they lie right-side together, then they are pinned into place and stitched. It's important that the four corners of each joining square meet precisely to get the finish really neat and avoid wrinkling or other problems later on. The rows are all sewn together (7 rows of 5 squares each) and ironed flat from the back, then turned right-side up and checked to make sure that the patchwork top lies flat, that the joins are accurate, and any loose threads visible are trimmed close for a neat finish.

The wadding is cut so that it is bigger than the quilt top - it's best to be generous as doing the quilting bit can shrink the wadding a bit. A plain piece of cotton is cut to the same size to use as the backing of the quilted layer, and a wadding 'sandwich' is created with the patchwork top, wadding and backing piece. All the layers are smoothed out to make sure they lie flat, then pinned into place starting in the centre and working outwards.

This wadding 'sandwich' is quilted using my sewing machine - the settings need to be altered a bit and as it's an old machine, this often involves a bit of trial and error until I get the tension right. I usually top-stitch double lines either side of the seam, starting sewing in the centre and working in lines outwards along each vertical and horizontal. This helps the fabric stretch outwards and lie smooth, and prevents accidental folding or wrinkles. I'm hoping to afford a better sewing machine eventually that does quilting really well, then I can do more complicated designs! Then all the loose top threads are pulled through to the back and tied off, and all the pins removed.

The back of the quilt is now a network of stitched lines criss-crossing with knotted threads at each junction, so to tidy this up I use a nice fleece fabric to back the quilt, and make the quilt extra cosy to use. Sometimes I put in an extra layer of wadding and then a cotton backing, for a thicker quilt. The backing is pinned into place, and then I cut out edging pieces often from a contrasting colour of plain cotton.

The edging can be a bit tricky. I work out what width of edging will look right with the quilt, then double the width and add a seam allowance on each side. I cut strips of the fabric long enough to overshoot the ends of the quilt by a little way, to give room for folding the corners neatly. The strips are ironed out flat, then folded in half lengthways and a crease ironed in, then each edge is folded into the centre crease and ironed again to indicate the seam allowance line. The first strip is pinned wrong-side up along the edge of the patchwork quilt, and sewn along the crease ½ cm in from the edge. Either I sew the opposite side the same way, and then the top and bottom pieces, or alternatively sometimes I do mitred edges (see how, for example here) working around the quilt.

The edging pieces are the folded over to the back and hand-sewn neatly into place, tucking the fold under and being careful not to sew right through to the front. I sew in a label at this stage too. It's also possible to add in touches such as a ribbon for decoration.

I tidy up and check the quilt over to make sure it's perfect, and remove spare bits of thread that seem to attach themselves to everything. My 5-year old daughter often helps out at this stage by getting a fridge magnet and crawling all over the floor finding all my dropped pins, which is very useful! However, she sticks my needles so far into my pin cushion that they get lost inside until I stab my finger on them…

I then get all available family members to admire the quilt, and go on at them about how hard it was so they appreciate the amount of effort involved. Usually I've been endlessly interrupted at every stage so the whole thing can take a considerable amount of time!