I am excited to share about my Weight Loss Quilt! My name is Kristen Hubert and I love scrap quilts and I love helping quilters find their inner ‘confident beginner’ no matter how long they’ve been quilting. My blog and YouTube channel is called Scrap Fabric Love.
Like a lot of quilters, I am someone who gets a but obsessive about the projects I’m working on. To be honest, quilting is ALL I have wanted to do since the start of the Pandemic.
In fact, I used my quilting obsession as an excuse for why I couldn’t exercise, get healthy and lose the weight I have put on over the last few years….until I decided to make my Weight Loss Quilt.
What is a Weight Lose Quilt?
A weight loss quilt is essentially a habit tracker in quilt form.
It was inspired by temperature quilts where a quilter records the highest and lowest temperature each day for a year and then creates a color key to translate the temperature into a quilt block.
I am making a quilt block a day to record the habits I want to work on that are going to help me lose weight.
For me those habits are eating healthy and exercising.
So far, making these blocks is really helping to motivate me – I’ve lost 20 lbs since I started in November last year!
In actuality, you could use this quilt to track any kind of habit.
I have members of my Weight Loss Quilt Quilt Facebook Group who are tracking not only eating and exercise but also water consumption and how many vegetables they’ve eaten. There is even one person who is using it to help them stop smoking!
How Do you make a weight loss quilt?
Since I started this project in November 2021, there have been lots of other quilters joining me and many of them have put together their own twists on the blocks, but here are the steps to follow to make the blocks the way I make them:
- Download my Free Weight Loss Quilt Starter Pack to get your tracking sheet, habit key and circle templates.
- Decide what habits you want to track – these should be habits that will contribute to your goal. (So for me, the goal tracker is weight loss and therefore the habits are eating healthy and exercising. )
- Decide on a color scheme for your quilt and assign colors of fabrics to different measures of the habits you are tracking ( see below for my key).
- Start tracking your habits once a day.
- Make a block each day ( or a batch of them and make them all on the weekend).
- As well as having a block each day of the week, I add an 8th block at the end of each week that indicates whether or not I have lost weight.
My Weight loss key
One 5″ quilt block per day:
Ate healthy = Low Volume 5 ” background square
Didn’t eat healthy = Orange 5 ” background square
No exercise = no circle
20 minutes or less exercise = small blue circle
20-40 minutes exercise = medium orange circle
40 minutes or more exercise = large pink circle
Didn’t lose weight (once weekly block) = white 5″ square
Did lose weight = pink denim 5″ square (my pink denim is an old pair of my jeans!)
Cutting the Circles
The free Weight Loss Quilt Starter Pack has a paper template for the circles or you can also use your Accuquilt GO Cutter if you have the right dies. If this is you head to my blog where I have the Accuquilt die numbers listed for the circle shapes I am using.
Fabric Requirements
Because I am using scraps and fabric remnants for my blocks I have quite a variety of low volume orange, blue, and pink fabrics that I am using.
Keeping your fabric choices broad like this can also help you if you decide to make your quilt bigger than you originally intended (see below for how this might happen!)
For each block. you will need a 5″ background square and a scrap for your circle applique (size dependent on your habit and how well you did with it that day!)
How many 5″ squares you need will depend on how long you intend to work on your quilt and your weight loss goals.
This is a great quilt for using up charm packs that are cluttering up your space – especially if you have lots in similar colorways!
To use charm packs for a throw size quilt, like I am making, you would need approximately 5 charm packs for the background plus scraps for the circles.
I strongly recommend using this quilt as a nit of a stash buster as well as a weight loss motivation tool! Use what you have!
How many blocks will you need?
The beauty of this quilt is not only that you aren’t going to know exactly what it will look like until it’s finished, you also don’t necessarily need to know how big it is going to be either.
Weight Loss Quilt Mock Up - Throw Size
I have a rough plane to make mine 63″ x63″ – a throw size.
With 5″ blocks (finishing at 4.5″ after seam allowances) that means I will make 196 blocks.
So the current plan is to be working on my quilt for approximately 6.5 months.
However…I might decide that I am not at my goal weight at that point and I might want to keep going- in which case I can add on rows and make my quilt a rectangle throw instead of a square or add some blacks to the back!
A bug proportion of the quilters who are doing this with me are planning to do it for a year – much like the temperature quilts that inspired the idea in the first place. They will have a bed size quilts when they are finished!
You could also aim much smaller and do this for a month or two and make a wall hanging instead!
How To sew your quilt blocks
I picked a raw edge applique for my blocks so the process is like this:
Step 1: Pick your background fabric.
Step 2: Apply a lightweight iron on fusible product (like bond a web) to the back of your circle.
Step 3: Use your iron to temporarily fuse your circle to your background square _ don’t stress about getting it perfectly dead center…close enough is good enough!
Step 4: Use a zigzag or blanket stitch to sew your circle on your background square (see video tutorial link below if you aren’t sure how to do this).
Step 5: Keep your blocks in order and stack them by tow. I actually sew each row together as soon as the blocks are done so I don’t lose track!
Step 6: Attach your rows, and when you have your whole quilt top done, it’s time to baste it into a quilt sandwich and quilt.
Link to Video Tutorials and Weight Loss Quilt Updates
Weight Loss Quilt YouTube Playlist – includes intro video with raw edge applique block construction tutorial. You will also find a tutorial in the first update video that shows you how to join your blocks and your rows.
Want To Join Me?
I would love to have even more quilters on this weight loss quilting journey with me!
If you enter your email and Download the Weight Loss Starter Pack you will also receive an email with an invite to the Weight Loss Quilt Facebook Group and you’ll get notified when I post a new video update about my own progress.