The Fat Quarter Challenge

I have always tried to squeeze as much as possible into the material I have. Probably comes from my Mum, who lived through the hardships and shortages of the Second World War. Her favourite recycling mantra was 'make do and mend', and she never threw anything away. So I recently took it as a personal challenge to see what I could make from fat quarters. With a new grand-daughter expected any day now, I thought I would start there.

A fat quarter is a small piece of material which is effectively a quarter of a square yard of fabric (or metre, if you are lucky). So they are popular with quilters, who can cut several six to nine inch (15-20 cm) squares from each. In practice, few bolts of material these days are exactly a yard or metre wide:  41"-42" or 112cm are the standard for the types of cotton and poly cotton from which most fat quarters are cut. So a fat quarter is usually more like 18" by 21".  Hence the name 'fat' quarter, I suppose.

Here's what I made recently from a few fat quarters: a kimono wrap dress or nightdress for newborn; a sun hat, a diaper cover, a play suit for c 3 months, and a circular skirt age c 3 months. You can find out more about squeezing tiny garments from a minimal amount of material below. Of course, if you have just a tiny bit more fabric, it will be a little easier!


Kimono wrap dress

I made this from  a piece of flannel, pale blue, with a design of cute tiny puppies. 

I was able to get this out because the design didn't have an obvious direction. So I broke the rules, and turned one piece of the pattern at right angles to the straight grain of the material.  This is not to be advised, in general, because fabric has different stretch / stability quality across the warp v the weft, but I figured that on such a tiny garment which would be worn for such a short time, this really didn't matter that much. The most important thing was to make sure I had a left and right front! I didn't photograph this step at the time, but here's an example laying out the pattern on another fat quarter.

The pink line shows you the whole of the back as this piece would be cut on the fold. As you can see, the bottom piece is turned through 90 degrees to squeeze it out of the material.

The pattern I used was from Carewear. I wasn't sure what the four sizes were, as the pattern is designed for premature and incubated  babies. I used the second largest, guessing that this might work for a newborn baby, the two smaller sizes were clearly for pre-term babies. At the time, we were expecting the new baby might be very small (her older sister was born 10 weeks early).

In the event, sadly, Ada never got to wear it. Actually, I should say, happily - because far from being a tiny premature baby, she was full term, and a good size, too. So this little kimono, which opens at the shoulders, had to go straight to the NICU at the local hospital.

Well, I should have learnt from my own rules: - don't make first size clothes as for new born babies - it's never worth it (but we never learn, do we?)

Baby hats

Yes, I've trimmed it with a different fabric for a decorative effect, but I could have squeezed it out of the one fabric. Anyway, if I can get two hats out of two fat quarters, I reckon that counts!

This was made from the free Scrappy Sunhat pattern by Jessica of Running with Scissors - my favourite sunhat pattern. Thank you, Jessica! I've made several, you can read about some of them here.

Diaper cover

I squeezed a size 3-6 months diaper cover from Dana's pattern. Actually, I tend to use her old pattern (i.e. not the new improved version) as I find the new one comes up bigger. And it has some tabs which do make it a bit easier if you are not using binding round the legs, but would also make it difficult to squeeze this size out of a fat quarter. I like binding the legs anyway, so I dispensed with the tabs. The ones below are 3-6 months.

And here's a pair I made earlier, in size up to 3 months. I love those chunky little legs.

The play suit

I had made a playsuit in a size 6 months for the new baby's cousin, three years earlier (below). This used Dana's Perfect Diaper Cover pattern, (the old version) extended about 5" above the waistline. However, I wouldn't have got that out of a fat quarter, because, as you can see, I added a front pocket (and a little gonk that fitted in the pocket) as well as long tie bow straps. And it was a size larger.

This time, I would be making a size smaller, and I thought I could deal with the straps a different way. This one was made from a fat quarter of flannel, printed with owls, but the owls design had a definite directional pattern, so no question of turning pattern pieces sideways. However, some owls faced up, and others down, so I had no problem turning the pattern upside down.

Fitting the pattern on to the fat quarter was really tight, and I ended up with a 'nick' in one of the leg curves, and the selvedge formed one of the side seams. The nick was caused by having to v-e-r-r-y slightly (!) overlap the front and back pattern pieces. However, as I planned to add double bias tape all the way round to house the leg elastic, I figured I'd get away with it. I could have easily made more diaper covers from the fat quarter, but no, I had to squeeze more from this piece!

There were some little scraps left (waste not, want not) which I joined to make straps for the playsuit. There wasn't enough to make long strings to tie in a bow as I had done previously, so I fashioned shorter straps through a couple of D-rings.

Postscript: In the end, we didn't like the D-rings (though I might use this idea for an older child).  So I un-stitched them, and used snap fasteners instead.



The circular skirt

This was a fat quarter of cotton. I had bought this as it perfectly complemented some little turquoise and apricot onesies. I had it in mind originally for a little gathered skirt, perhaps splitting it into two strips, joining them and gathering it. This would have been the easy way! Instead, I decided on a circular skirt. 

I made my own pattern based on the baby's waist measurement. There are several websites that give directions for how to measure and calculate the quadrant to cut out for the waist, with the material folded into 4 (i.e. folded in half and then half again, making a smaller square). However, some of these assume you are using stretchy material. You need a bit of 'give' in the waistband to enable you to get the skirt over the baby's hips. One very useful tutorial is by Dana from Made Every Day. She makes the waistband a little bigger than the actual waist measurement and then attaches it to some wide elastic. The link above is for a very small circle skirt for a newborn baby, which does fit on a fat quarter. I made mine a bit bigger to fit 3 months plus. (Dana also has a video tutorial and other tutorials for larger circle skirts using elastic waistbands.).

I made my own pattern, based on a similar calculation to Dana's. I failed to take a photo while cutting the pattern out, but I've folded another fat quarter in 4 here so you can see my pattern on it. I've made the central cut-out so that it it just a bit bigger than the baby's waist - a couple of inches circumference, I think, which equates to a very small increase in radius - only about a third of an inch, or, if you work in centimetres, about 0.8 cm.

You can probably see that the fat quarter was fractionally too small, my pattern is overlapping the right hand edges. So what I ended up cutting out was it was just slightly oval. However, as I planned to use a contrasting bias bound hem, I was able to cover up the slight shortage on the two opposite sides, bringing the skirt pretty much back to circularity!.

Finally, I added a separate waistband of home made bias binding using the scraps from the fat quarter, and inserted some elastic - about a centimetre wide, or just over 3/8" wide.

There is an alternative approach to circular skirts provided by Melly Sews, which splits the skirt down the back to add an opening, and a separate waistband. She is showing an adult skirt, but the method works for a child's skirt too.

I hope this will have provided some inspiration for what you can get out of a fat quarter.

Post post note: Although these are not made from a single fat quarter, I continue to use fat quarters in multiples - see my later post.