For the first time in 5 years, I started a quilt. This project made a brief appearance in a WAYWO about a year ago, as a kit I bought during my initial days of confusion. ;-) The Best Holiday of the Year is approaching, according to my son, so I pulled out the bag containing the kit to see what I could do.
A few ways to start a quilt: Be inspired by a fabric you want to feature in it, or a fabric that inspires your color choices. Fall in love with a pattern. Think about the person for whom the quilt is intended - this can lead you to either patterns that suit their name or interests, or fabrics that do the same.
Or, do what I did and let someone else select the pattern and fabric, and buy a kit. ;-)
What Are You Working On is a community diary series for all things crafty and artsy, in a variety of mediums and techniques.
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The fabrics chosen by the quilt store included several lines, so there is no "one-designer" look. This pleases me. The orange polka-dot on the second-from-left is the inner border, and the high-contrast stripe in the middle is the binding. I will probably cut a bias binding to take advantage of the stripe, but that is probably a topic for another diary.
Laps from Fats The publisher's site doesn't have links, so I used Amazon. Definitions: Laps are lap-sized quilts, smaller than bed-size and bigger than wall-size. The quilts are a variety of sizes within this range, as the designer says, "laps come in a variety of sizes." Fats are fat quarters, a cut of fabric 18" by 22 or 23" - this is from cutting a half yard in half down the middle. For certain common shapes, it is more useful to have a fat quarter than a long skinny quarter yard cut, which would be 9" x 44/45"
I love this part - I don't have to even think about the cutting order or position. It's already planned!
Since I am rusty at this, I only used 4 layers of fabric in my first round of cutting. I know that some quilters use up to 8, but this always seems too thick for me.
The first cut is to make an even edge on all four layers. Then I cut the strips for the wide strip and the narrow strip. Then a strip for the larger squares and rectangles, then the last strip for the small rectangles.
Here are my cut pieces from the fat-quarters,
Fussy Cutting
This refers to cutting a certain section of fabric to achieve a better/different effect than just cutting a random piece of fabric.
For the first couple pieces, I used an already-cut piece (so it was the right size) to try to get my starting points for cutting. This worked okay for the 2 larger squares and two larger rectangles.
For the small rectangles, I made a window template. I cut a piece of stiff paper the size of the cut piece, which happened to be 2.5" x 3.5". Then I cut out 1/4" inside the rectangle for the "window" - the part that will show when the piece is sewn in to the quilt. The magazine postcard was a little more stiff and durable than plain paper.
Here is the window template in action.
Here it is again, from a distance.
And close up.
These are all the fussy-cut pieces from the "feature" fabric with its cute little panels.
This is the status of the quilt at the end of the events in this diary. I did pair up the wide strips and short strips, as they are the first items sewn. I matched a mostly-black with a mostly-colored, very busy with more plain, and no two pairs the same.
My overall soft goal is to have the top pieced by Halloween. My goal for the next week and diary is to test my 1/4" seam sewing ability and to piece at least one block.
Additional diaries on the creative process can be found in the DK Quilt Guild and Knitting Guild groups.