No-Sew Sensory Quilt

How to Make

1. Decide how big you’d like your sensory quilt to be – it can be as big or small as desired. Select the correct amount of felt sheets to create the desired size. Take each sheet and fold one of the outer corners in, so it meets the opposite edge, forming a folded over square. Mark a line across the folded edge to trace out the square shape and cut out, leaving a felt square. Repeat for all your felt sheets.
2. Now select your embellishments. The Important thing for a sensory quilt is to offer varied texture and shape, so children can explore touch and the different feelings the quilt creates. We’ve got for a mixture of charms, beads, shells, bells and other embellishments but you can be as creative as you like.
3. Take your first felt square and selection of embellishments, let’s say beads. Now lay your felt square out on a flat surface and turn on your glue gun, ensuring it has a stick of glue inside. Give it a few minutes for the glue to soften up.
4. While you’re waiting for the glue gun, arrange the charms across the felt square in rows, spread evenly apart, as shown. You’ll want to leave a margin all the way around the outside, as when you assemble your quilt the felt panels are going to overlap and you don’t want to have embellishments in the way.
5. Once the glue gun is ready, start sticking your charms in place, squeezing out a little spot of glue and pressing the charm into the felt, holding it there for a few seconds then moving onto the next. Repeat for all your squares, until you have the correct number of panels fully embellished.
6. Now lay out all your squares in the order you’d like them to be. To fit together, the panels will need to overlap by approx half an inch. Start with the top two. Take the left-hand panel and add a line of glue along the right-hand edge. Now stick the left-hand edge of the right-hand panel down onto the glue, ensuring it’s lined up correctly with top and bottom edges matching, as shown.
7. This now forms your structure, as all your other felt panels will need to line up with the top two. Take two more felt panels and arrange them so one is slightly overlapping the other (we mixed up the way we did this for each row, so for example if your top row has the right-hand felt piece sitting under the left-hand piece, the next row will be the other way around to add interest). Tuck the felt panels underneath the two upper panels, and then glue in place.
8. Continue in this way until all your felt panels have been glued in place. Leave to dry, and your no-sew sensory quilt is complete! NOTE – do not give this quilt to very young children or babies, and never leave children unsupervised with it.

Top Tip

Don't worry if you get stringy bits of glue lying across your felt panels when affixing the embellishments in place. Simply wait for them to dry then carefully rub them off with your fingers.