Quilt Help!

[ZakareyasMama]

I have some basic sewing skills and I want to make a little quilt for DS (and if it turns out more as gifts!) 

My idea is that it would be made up of differently-textured fabrics on one side and just a solid on the other side. Some of the squares I wanted to put a crinkle on too. It's sort of like a sensory quilt.

Here's the thing: I've never made a quilt before. So... any advice? Any good internet tutorials? What do people usually put in the middle of the squares to make them cushiony? Are there any special quilting supplies I *must* have? 

Thanks for teaching me!!

[ZakareyasMama]

Oh! And it is hard to sew together different fabrics? For example, one square might be t-shirt material and next to it would be silk and burlap. Is that going to be a hot mess? Should I use one piece of fabric to bind everything to?

[littlest birds]

For quality's sake, the odd fabrics should definitely have a liner fabric because stretchy fabrics and finer and rougher fabrics will cause the quilt to twist out of shape easily.  I would make matching squares to go behind every square that is not regular woven cotton, and put them together as if they were a two-layer single fabric.  Probably baste the two layers together first to keep things from shifting when you do the piecing.  This would resolve the most important problems with the fabric variations and would also keep things from going through something loose like burlap --in either direction.  Does that make sense? 

There might still be some difficulties with your machine operating with the different fabrics, but not insurmountable.  

You could even possibly sandwich something between the two layers, like maybe little felt balls that a babe can feel through the fabric. :)  Another option would be to put iron-on interfacing on the backs of the pieces. 

Other than that, sew the squares in rows first, then sew the rows together in to the large block.  Good luck and happy sewing!

[ZakareyasMama]

Thank you so much for those great ideas! My project is going to be slow-going because I'm working on a 457 other things at the same time. I'll post my updates (and questions ) here though.

[CallMeKelly]

Also, keep the seams at about 1/2" instead of 1/4 since you plan on using different fabrics.  Something to look at for your first quilt would be seam direction.  This will make a huge difference in your ability to make your corners match up and the quilt lay flat.  Just google and browse a few tutorials on seam direction for quilts.  I suggest having each strip of squares pressed in opposite directions because that really makes it easy to match up the corners.  Good luck!  Also a great place to go is: http://www.quiltingboard.com/  they have great tutorials here!