Having never made anything from patchwork before I wasn't too sure how this was going to turn out.

I now wish that I had taken photographs at the different stages of manufacture because I am quite pleased with the result.

I used offcuts of fabric and bought some 6oz wadding for the padding. The backing was some sheeting I had left over from making the cot sheets.

The wadding cost £6 and I used about two-thirds of it, making the cost of the quilt £4.

Cheeky Monkey Cot Quilt

I decided that I wanted the quilt to be approximately 1m wide by 150cm long, and that I would use 10cm squares. I drew a template on a piece of cardboard and used this to draw around on the fabric I was using before cutting.

I selected 5 fabrics, 4 colour co-ordinating and the last one the animal print. You will need to cut 30 squares for each colour which means that each piece of fabric will need to measure at least 1m x 30m or 50cm x 60cm. In the case of the animal print fabric I created 6 squares for the 5 different animals, total 30 squares.

Once the squares are stitched together the quilt will be smaller than 1m x 1.5m because of the seam allowances and the quilting. I had a 0.75cm seam allowance and once quilted it measured 82cm x 118xm.

Pattern I created for the quilt

  L         L      
Z         Z        
        E         E
      G         G  
    M         M    
  L         L      
Z         Z        
        E         E
      G         G  
    M         M    
  L         L      
Z         Z        
        E         E
      G         G  
    M         M    

Key showing number of squares required in each fabric

  Cream 30
  Khaki 30
  Blue 30
  Coffee 30
L Lion 6
Z Zebra 6
E Elephant 6
G Giraffe 6
M Monkey 6

I pinned and stitched one row at a time, pressing the seams at the back flat after I had finished each strip.

Once I had stitched all 15 strips, I pinned and stitched them all togather.

Then I layered a piece of light coloured scrap cotton (1m x 1.5m), the 6 oz wadding and the patchwork. I stitched around the edges to hold it all together and trimmed the edges so that it was all the same size as the patchwork.

I then stitched up and down all the seam lines on the patchwork (through the wadding and the cotton) to quilt the patchwork.

Once this once completed I placed my backing cotton (left over sheeting) right side together with the quilt top and stitched all the way around with a 1cm seam. I left a 30cm opening on the bottom seam in the middle to enable me to turn the quilt the right way out. I then stitched this opening closed.

The finished quilt in the cot.

Finished Cheeky Monkey Quilt