I made a summer quilt and started last summer, but that’s not why it’s called a summer quilt. A summer quilt is a quilt with either lightweight or (in this case) no batting.

I decided to make a large queen sized lightweight quilt for our bed for those times we just needed something to nap under, or for not very cold nights. Also, I had a lot of light to medium value floral fabrics in my stash that I wanted to use up. My mom had hit a sale at a fabric store that was closing and bought half-yards of seemingly everything.

Going though my stash, I picked the fabrics I wanted and cut 10″ squares out of everything. In my case, I did not care if I had doubles or even 3 or 4 squares of the same fabrics – I just wanted to use them up. You could also use a layer cake or two instead.

I cut and cut and cut. And stacked.

Eventually I decided to start laying things out to figure how many squares I would need. I cut some more.

For this quilt, I decided it would be more interesting to place the 10″ squares on point and piece the strips diagonally. I also laid out the squares on the floor multiple times to make sure I didn’t have matching fabrics too close together, or all the pink ones crammed on one side.

Finally I started piecing, which was easy enough. Keep track of where I was seemed to be the issue. For the half triangle on the sides, i just cut the 10″ squares in half. Technically they should have been a bit bigger so I fudged the seams a little. I also took one square and cut it into the four corner triangles.

When the top was all done, I found a nice and worn flannel top sheet in our cupboard. We had already worn out the matching bottom sheet, which got a large hole when someone put their foot through it. It was a well-loved set. I did have to unpick the top deep hem of the sheet and piece a bit on the side, since the sheet was rectangular and the quilt top was square.

Since there was no batting, it did not take much to baste it together.

The only quilting I did was a stitch in the ditch along the seams. You can get away with doing it this wide because there is no batting at all. I used my walking foot and the quilt was thin enough that rolling it up and moving it around was much easier than even a double sized quilt with batting.

For the binding, I had cut out 2.5″ strips from my favourite scraps as I cut the blocks and set them aside. I did the machine sewn method where you stitch the binding to the back and pull it round to the front and sew it down. Any slightly off seams were also covered up this way.

This is really a quick quilt – despite how long it took me to finish, and it really is great for when you don’t want a blanket that is to warm or too heavy. Plus it uses up a LOT of large stash pieces in a hurry!

My husband gives it two thumbs up – both for fabric selection and ease of napping.