To Quilt
Vicbowin has decided that she wants to make her own comforter set (with my help of course). I've actually never made a full bed set before, but I imagine that it's not much harder than making the quilt and I've done plenty of those.
So I thought that since this is going to be my running project for awhile I'd let you all in on the fun of it. Today I thought I'd tell you about the first steps that I take when planning out a quilt.
First--come up with a pattern. Since I'm working with an 9 year old I started off using pictures of quilts I found online. She whittled her choices down to this one:
Which I guess is a Pottery Barn quilt, so I'll be making a Pottery Barn knock-off while I'm at it.
Now the key with quilting is that it's all an optical illusion. It's taking basic, easy to sew shapes, like squares, and making them look like different shapes. I'm really good at squares. In fact I did a good job of repeatedly mentioning to my little Vicbowin when I wasn't sure I could accomplish the quilt she was admiring.
That's how we came to decide on this particular pattern, because I can do this... but we'll get to that later.
Second--after deciding what pattern to use you have to decide what colors. Following my previous use of images to help Vicbowin decide, I went on over to a great website called colourlovers.com (don't go... you'll never be seen from again).
Not surprisingly, Vicbowin chose this pallette:
The third stage of the process, for me, is to lay out what I want the whole thing to look like (to scale). Since the average sized bedspread is about 81x105 I made my layout an 8x10... I imagined that that was 'to scale' but I'm a terrible mathmatician so perhaps I was wrong.
Those were the easy parts. Next comes the hard stuff. The math. I have, in the past, honestly considered why I even try to quilt. I'm terrible at this part. It hurts my brain and makes me want to scream expletives into the air. It's a good thing I married an engineer because my quilting would never pass stage 3 without him.
But the math aspects will have to wait until later, because he's not home right now. :)
I'll tell you, instead, about the basic layout of each block. Without knowing the geometric equations needed I do know that each block is really a series of strips sewn to each other in a manner that will make it look like I sewed on block on top of the another.
Like so:
Oops... missed a step.... see how there is a nice white square around the next image? I would need to sew those on to the above rectangle before sewing the blue strips onto the below one... make sense?
Now I'll have to write down my list of shapes needed and go to that darling engineer of mine with my biggest, poutiest eyes and say "Honey.... will you help me with something?"
Once that's done I can get to the cutting and the sewing. Until then!
So I thought that since this is going to be my running project for awhile I'd let you all in on the fun of it. Today I thought I'd tell you about the first steps that I take when planning out a quilt.
First--come up with a pattern. Since I'm working with an 9 year old I started off using pictures of quilts I found online. She whittled her choices down to this one:
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Which I guess is a Pottery Barn quilt, so I'll be making a Pottery Barn knock-off while I'm at it.
Now the key with quilting is that it's all an optical illusion. It's taking basic, easy to sew shapes, like squares, and making them look like different shapes. I'm really good at squares. In fact I did a good job of repeatedly mentioning to my little Vicbowin when I wasn't sure I could accomplish the quilt she was admiring.
That's how we came to decide on this particular pattern, because I can do this... but we'll get to that later.
Second--after deciding what pattern to use you have to decide what colors. Following my previous use of images to help Vicbowin decide, I went on over to a great website called colourlovers.com (don't go... you'll never be seen from again).
Not surprisingly, Vicbowin chose this pallette:
The third stage of the process, for me, is to lay out what I want the whole thing to look like (to scale). Since the average sized bedspread is about 81x105 I made my layout an 8x10... I imagined that that was 'to scale' but I'm a terrible mathmatician so perhaps I was wrong.
Those were the easy parts. Next comes the hard stuff. The math. I have, in the past, honestly considered why I even try to quilt. I'm terrible at this part. It hurts my brain and makes me want to scream expletives into the air. It's a good thing I married an engineer because my quilting would never pass stage 3 without him.
But the math aspects will have to wait until later, because he's not home right now. :)
I'll tell you, instead, about the basic layout of each block. Without knowing the geometric equations needed I do know that each block is really a series of strips sewn to each other in a manner that will make it look like I sewed on block on top of the another.
Like so:
Oops... missed a step.... see how there is a nice white square around the next image? I would need to sew those on to the above rectangle before sewing the blue strips onto the below one... make sense?
Now I'll have to write down my list of shapes needed and go to that darling engineer of mine with my biggest, poutiest eyes and say "Honey.... will you help me with something?"
Once that's done I can get to the cutting and the sewing. Until then!
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