Say you have some pieces of vaguely rectangular paper (band flyers?) or fabric (old t-shirts?) or something and want to make them into a quilt. It could happen. It happened to me and I had managed to stay quilt drama free for my entire life. What follows is a quick, dirty (literally) way to make a 'quilt'.
The secret: TAPE (1st footnote)! A more quilterly version of the using tape is using bias ribbon and fabric glue stick. Glue it, sew it (twice because of raw edge), wash it, done: we've cut out the ironing because everything lies flat.
If your pieces are even vaguely the same size, you can arrange them into a radiating square like so
|------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |--------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |------------------------------------------------|It can help to use something to make sure your angles are all 90 degrees like they should be, but you really don't need anything fancy. Quilters usually use something called a rotary cutting mat that is a big green thing with graph paper marked on it, but you can do it just a well with a few broken down cardboard boxes (2nd footnote). Use tape on the back of your material for all of the seams. I used electrical tape (3rd footnote), which is a decent choice as it's robust - unlike masking tape - but forgiving - unlike Duck Tape). Notice that square in the middle. It currently only has sticky tape at its edges, so figure out a way to fill it (more paper/fabric, tape facing down, something). If you want this quilt to last for a while, NOW - while its pieces are still small - is when you staple or sew the quilt to the tape. You don't even need a fancy long reach stapler, you just need to fold things to fit under an ordinary one. Once you have squares, you can fit the squares together to make your quilt (use tape again and staples again, but this time they should fit together pretty well even if your fabric/paper pieces are only roughly the same size). You now have a 'quilt'(4th footnote)!
Now for its main issue. There's a good chance you saw this coming way before I did, but in my defense, I was in a huge hurry and have a pretty high tolerance for filth. What's wrong with this picture is that there are gaps between the material (unless your rectangles were exactly the same size and twice as long as they are tall) and the gaps are covered in tape that is sticky side up! That is, the gaps don't get sealed inside the quilt (which can hide a myriad of disasters). Your 'quilt' will now gather every little bit of dirt, lint, cat hair, people hair, dust, dead bugs, etc. in your apartment (see: literally dirty) and you will see all of it every time you look at it.
There are three ways to fix this problem.
The quick fun way: this involves fixing it right away rather than waiting, and that is a tape solution as well! You may want clear tape for this (packing tape or even scotch tape if your gaps are small enough, but packing tape sticks way better). Especially if you need to use clear tape, do this AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, BEFORE your original tape gets too filthy!
However, if you didn't do this right away, you have two choices and I strongly recommend the first:
2.1 Start over and use packing tape immediately after you first tape your pieces together. I know, no one want to start over and loose all the work they put in, but seriously, the other solution stinks. It's really, really picky, unfun, and time consuming and it will frustrate the hell out of you!
Unfortunately, solution 2.1 isn't always possible. If your quilt material was paper and irreplaceable (e.g. an original Cramps set list) and/or not something you want to cover any of (e.g. a pen and ink drawing from a tweaker friend), you'll need to do the not at all fun and extremely time consuming solution of self taping.
2.2 Tape, all kinds but especially electrical tape, likes nothing more than sticking to itself sticky sides together, so take advantage of that. You will need to cut out matching pieces to all your (probably irregular) gaps. I suggest using a razor blade type tool directly on the roll of tape as your quilt is just too easily damaged with such a tool. Scissors are necessary, but wholly inadequate for the task. It will take forever, might require a magnifying glass, and you'll quite possibly go insane, but it does (eventually) work. However, may never want to quilt again, its that damn annoying.
Oh, if you want this quilt to last for a while, you'll definitely want to go over and sew/staple your quilt materials to the tape. The fact that your material is stuck to the tape means unraveling raw edges aren't so much of a worry, but even Duck Tape, for all its sterling reputation, slips over time, so the sewing/stapling part is kind of necessary in the long run (5th footnote).
Footnotes:
1. Quilters often want their stuff to last forever, and if this is the case, you can buy acid free tape that won't slowly disintegrate your material. On the other hand, it's more punk rock to just let the tape eat the fabric/paper.
2. Broken down boxes have the special property that when they're assembled, they form a box! It's profound, I know. Also, the assembled box is quite accurate because actual boxes will support more weight than things that are only close to boxes (there's a point where making the box more accurate isn't worth the time it takes, but for what we're trying to do, cardboard boxes are plenty accurate). In particular, all of the their folds are either parallel or meet at right angles, making broken down boxes an excellent substitute for fancy quilter graph paper mats. A second box is often needed to check that further away lines are also parallel. <\p>
3. Caution for electrical tape users - unrolling it from the roll stretches it noticeably, so let it 'rest' before you use it on your 'quilt'.
4. Technically you have the front of a quilt, but if your quilt is made of paper you probably don't want to sleep under it anyway. If you want an actual quilt, you need stuffing - called batting in Quilt, something for the back (e.g. an old sheet), and something for the edge - called binding in Quilt. For stuffing, you're looking for something that puffs back up when sat on, so crumpled newspapers aren't ideal. One cheap option is the stuffing from inside thrift store stuffed animals (the actual soft ones, not the ones filled with sawdust that come from carnivals), spread out and stapled/safety pinned (= tied in Quilt) at frequent intervals.
5. The sewing option is easy as pie since it's really just sewing in a straight-ish line over a combo of paper/fabric and tape, and none of the other fancy quilting things like ironing and pinning. The stapling option is a bit of a pain because you have to fit large portions of quilt under the stapler arm. When this becomes too much, switch to safety pins!