What's the easiest way to make a quick quilty gift? By using a quilt panel, of course!
You may've heard them called cheater quilts, but I prefer to think of them as "helper" quilts since they help a quilter to whip up a baby quilt, a lap quilt for a sick friend, or any have-to-have-a-quilt-made-now project.
Quilt panels come in all different sizes and some may need a little extra help to get to the size we might want them to be. With some panels a border or two will suffice, but others may need to be cut up and have some fabric added to make it large enough.
Some quilt panels are really just too small to be made into a bed-size quilt - the panel would get lost in all the fabric that you would have to add to it to make it large enough. Keep this in mind when you are trying to decide what to do with your quilt panel. Not every quilt panel was made to be a king-size quilt!
This panel is so small that it is really only ever going to be a wall hanging.
A larger panel may just need a border or two added to them. That's a really simple way to quickly make a lap quilt or even a bed quilt.
Some panels can be cut apart and you can have lots of fun with these ones! You can add additional fabric vertically or horizontally - or both! If you think that it would add to the panel, you could add pieced blocks, rather than just solid fabric. This would take a bit more time to do, but could be quite effective.
This panel would be easy to cut up and insert some coordinating fabric.
If you are cutting up a panel and adding additional fabric, consider where you want the main part of the quilt panel to be so it will be highlighted to its best effect.
Click on the image below to watch a video on my YouTube channel which gives more information on options with quilt panels.
Creatively,
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