Friday 28 April 2017

Designing a Custom Pattern

I received a quilting order from a guild member early this week. After we chatted about its purpose and colour the owner left me with the operative words: Flowers and Tendrils.
It's a busy design made from 4 units of six, 1inch strips, tumbled into a 12 inch block.
A small overall design would disappear. But the back is quite neutral so any design will be bolder there.

Today I finally had things clear in my mind. I started with a map. This was simple so I didn't need to mock it up with EQ. Graph paper worked fine.
I have a set of circle templates I use to decide and arrange size and positions for the featured flowers. A tally and a map helps me keep my position once the quilt is on the frame.


I like to do the features first, rather than having to stop in the middle of the "fill" to place a design. In order to keep the integrity of the quilt I pin all the way along in the the un-quilted areas. This keeps everything in position for when the sandwich is re-rolled on the frame back to the beginning.





After drawing 6 different flower designs in sizes ranging  from 12 inches to 5 inches. They are pinned into position on the quilt and stitched through the paper.














When they were all stitched into position (15) I removed the paper and restitched a tight echo around each one.















Back to the beginning. This is ready to finish with smaller flowers, leaves and tendrils.

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