A Gift a Day Gift Thirty-Four: The "Black Watch Plaid" Quilt

Well, so I THINK we have finally come to the final gift in my "Gift a Day" series.  Not exactly the "low key" December I had planned, but at least I got it all done before the start of Christmas break, thus I won't have to worry about my son destroying the house while I'm obsessively running the sewing machine.

Course, I could be forgetting something, which has been known to happen, but I'm hoping I got everyone covered and all the gifts accomplished for the year.

This final gift is a gift to my husband and son, in that I MADE it for my husband, but I'm thinking my son will immediately claim it as anything blanket related he tends to grab as soon as he sees it.

Some people take great pride in being Irish or Swedish or Italian.  My husband takes great pride in having some Scottish blood in him. 

Years ago (like 12 or so) I tried to get a hold of enough Black Watch plaid to make a kilt for my husband, but I was never able to get a hold of very much at one time before Jo Ann's sold out of it, even when I special ordered it!  I have a few 1 yard scraps from all of those years ago and thought about maybe making my husband a quilt out of those somehow this holiday season.

And then I ran across a nice big chunk of black watch plaid in a high quality woven fabric and bought it at the used store for 1.50 a while back.  I finally pulled out all three remnants of fabric and picked the longest one to make my husband a quilt out of this year, and the woven fabric won on length and width.

I just used the plaid as a big center panel in the quilt and then added strips of dark blue I cut from a queen sized flat sheet I had in my fabric stores.  I was able to even get the bottom for the quilt out of the same sheet with just a teeny tiny bit left over, which worked great for me.  The final product ended up being somewhere between a twin and a full sized quilt, but I know it'll work well for my husband to curl up in on his recliner or in his desk chair, so I was happy enough with the final size.

I then quilted the final quilt with some green thread my step-mom sent me.  I ended up buying some quilt binding for the quilt as all I had was one container of this color or that color of quilt binding and I wanted it to look nice, so I just bought new instead.

Total Cost to Make Gift:  About 9.00 for the quilt binding and 1.50 for the original remnant of fabric.  I'm not sure what the original cost on the sheet was since I've had it for a long time, so I'm not counting that cost.  The batting I had bought at a yard sale for .50 a couple of years ago.  So all totaled about 11.00.

I used quilt basting spray vs. pins, but the basting spray was leftover from a previous project I had done, so I'm not counting it in with the cost of the final product here.

Total Time to Make Gift:  About four hours, as the quilt came together pretty quick and quilt basting spray is a wonder of wonders to make life easier.