How I designed my Man quilt

- Disclaimer -
The "KTM" logo is not my own, nor am I associated at all with the company. This design is not for sale, nor any repoductions of the quilt.

 

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I'm finally happy to say I have finally finished my man quilt. This is one of those projects which I created from scratch, no pattern, nothing! So fair enough to say when making this one there was plenty of frustrated times, and long moments of pondering and lots of thoughts of 'Why can't I just make simple quilts?'

This one was a quilt of firsts, one of those was designing my own paper peicing pattern from my own original design.

I started with this sketch:

 



Then I drew my sketch onto graph paper, to scale. For example for each tiny 2mm square on paper represented an inch on the quilt, therefore, each larger square represented 5 inches. I tried to make sure all of the points fell on a corner of each 5 inch square to make it easier when cutting sections of my pattern to peice. Pardon the yucky picture, but I like to work in greylead so I can edit on the go.

 

From here, I divided my pattern into 3 parts, top middle and bottom, seeing as though the centre section of the quilt is a plain orange strip and is left blank for the applique. I then drew a grid of 5in squares on pattern paper the size of the section of the quilt I was working on. I then drew the design onto the grid paper. So I made a life sized paper version of my quilt.

 

Next I clearly labeled each colour and I broke the pattern into smaller sections for peiceing. I cut these out as I went along, Instead of cutting them out in one go then having the trouble of playing patchwork puzzle. Not all of the sections were a 5in block, they were usually 5in wide and mostly 10 and 15 inches long, depending on the design in that section, beacuse I wanted to minimise matching up too many lines.

 

 

 

From here you could use your pattern to paper peice using which ever method you prefer. As I went along I found it helpful to copy my pattern to the back of the paper. And dont forget to leave extra fabric and trim to 1/4 in accurately. I know it sounds really obvious, but I really felt I had to keep on reminding myself about this (and to be patient!) to ensure accuracy.



So without further ado, Finally complete! My Man Quilt!!!

Close up of the quilting - random squares.

 

 

 

 

What do you think?