A few weeks ago, I made a quilt. Well, kind of. It's a wonky mess, that's not finished "correctly", but it is technically a "quilt" and I slept with it on my bed last night, and it didn't fall apart, so I'm calling it a quilt.

I went into this whole quilt-making thing not wanting to follow any rules, any tutorials. I was in a mood and I was just not having any of that. I was not about to cut anything straight, measure anything, do any math. I just wanted to make. the. thing. damnit.

Here's what I did:

Step 1. Take a bunch of old sheets and pillowcases - doesn't matter how many, I used 2 pillowcases that were different colours, a big flowery sheet, and a double bed fitted sheet. If, like me, you're using a sheet with elastic in it, rip that shit out. Seriously just make a cut with some scissors and then rip it out.

Step 2. Rip up your sheets/pillowcases. Doesn't matter the size, or if they match or anything. Maybe keep one that's reasonably big to use as the backing for the quilt. I basically ripped a double bed sheet in half (roughly) to get the backing for my quilt.

Step 3. Lay those ripped up pieces out in front of you and start jigsawing them together. Bonus points if - like me- you tried to do this on your bed and accidentally pinned through your sheets a lot

Step 4. Pin your pieces into place once you roughly have the look and size quilt face that you want - it doesn't have to be perfect here, I left a few spots that I filled in later with bits to fit the quilt backing that I'd made. I decided to fold my pieces over so that there weren't raw edges, but raw edges would be cool, too (I guess you'd just have to worry about the seams coming apart after a while)

HOT TIP (which I learned after I made mine, of course): try using safety pins instead of regular pins when you're pinning your quilt pieces together so that they don't just all fall out when you go try to sew it.

Step 5. Sew your quilt top! start wherever the hell you want. I know I did. There's probably an easier way to figure out where to start, but I don't know it.

Step 6. If your seams are so wonky that they cause a whole part of your quilt to get all billowy and floppy, just fold that bit over and make it an "accent" - make it work, right?

Step 7. with right sides facing (this is the only time that a rule matters) sew your quilt backing to your quilt face - now you've got a lil quilt cover-y thing that you can slide some batting into.

Step 8. Go buy some batting - and maybe measure your quilt before you go - that way you're not wasting money/batting. Bring your batting home. Cut your batting (probably don't try to rip it, that probably wouldn't work out well) to just under the size of your quilt - I didn't measure, I eyeballed.

Step 9. With your quilt cover thingy right sides out, slide the batting inside. Trim if it doesn't fit inside. I had to. Then once it does (roughly) fit inside, pin it in a couple place so that it stays put.

Step 10. Make some cross marks with pins (or don't) and just start hand sewing little x's every so often to hold the quilt in place. I guess mine ended up somewhere around 10cm apart - but again, screw measuring.

Step 11. Sew up the top of the quilt either by hand or by machine.

Step 12. Admire your wonky ass quilt.

You've just improvised a quilt! Sorry in advance to all the real quilters who actually know what they're doing - let's just call this thing a "how to that's not really a how to".