Why Limit Yourself
When You Can Tap Into the Resources of
Professional Quilters - -Right Now?
Learn Insider Secrets for Drawing Quilt Blocks and Templates . . .
These are the Same Techniques Professional Quilters Use
To Design Quilts and to Change the Size of their Quilt Blocks
Date:
From: Penny Halgren
Greetings Quilter,
Say the words "design a quilt" and most quilters will shake their head and say - "I could never do that!"
It's a familiar feeling, yet most quilters actually design quilts without a second thought. They just don't think of it as designing.
Take a look at your own quilts. Unless all of your quilts are made using Quilt Kits with all of the fabric chosen and cut for you (and you use it exactly as they tell you), you are designing your quilt.
You are choosing the fabrics and colors to use, even if you are copying a quilt from a pattern, book or magazine.
But more than likely, you are also deciding what to use for borders - how wide to cut the fabric, whether to piece your borders or use strips of fabric, etc. And your choices may be different from the one in the picture you are copying.
Sometimes you probably change the number and placement of the blocks in the quilt. Or even start with the quilt in the picture and then add blocks, sashing, cornerstones, or some other element.
You may also be using ideas you get from quilting books or magazines. Maybe you start with a quilt block you like, make a bunch of them and then decide how you will sew them together to complete your quilt.
Guess what! You are designing a quilt!
But - have you ever looked at a quilt block, wanted to use it in a quilt, but couldn't find a pattern, or templates, for it?
Or maybe you found the perfect block with templates, but the block was the wrong size. Now you have to decide whether to just add or remove blocks, increase the size of the border, add sashing, or whatever other thing you can do to make the quilt the size you want. When really all you wanted was a 12 inch block instead of a 9 inch block.
If you knew how to draw your own templates, that problem could be solved.
But not many quilters know how to draw their own templates. As a matter of fact, most quilters are afraid to even try to draw their own quilt blocks.
And most quilt shops don't offer workshops in drafting quilt blocks so you can get your own templates. After all, their pattern and book sales might suffer if quilters became independent and could make their own patterns!
On the other hand, YOU could save hundreds of dollars, time and frustration by drawing your own templates.
Think of the fabric you could buy instead!
Like so many quilters, for years, I relied on patterns, books and magazines for quilt ideas and templates. If the templates weren't included - I wasn't making that quilt.
It occurred to me that I was really limiting myself by not knowing how to make my own templates, though.
But there was nobody to show me how to draw my own templates.
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When you first look at this block, you might think you will be sewing diamond shapes together. |
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| Once you divide the block into its natural grid, you see that you are sewing squares and half-square triangles together. |
Eventually I ran across a book that showed me how many of the traditional quilt blocks are divided into a grid.
Some blocks have 4 squares, some have 9 squares, some have 25 squares, etc. And then in some blocks, the squares are divided into even smaller shapes to create the design of the quilt. But basically, most traditional quilt blocks can be divided into some number of squares.
As you look at the Bachelor Puzzle quilt block on the right, the top block is a picture of a finished block, and you can't see very clearly how it is sewn together. As a result, you might think you will be sewing diamonds, squares and half-square triangles together in some sort of strange order.
It looks kind of complicated, so you might not even try to make the block.
However when you look at the bottom picture and see how each of the patches is divided, the light bulb might go off, and you'll say "Ah, now I see. It is squares and half-square triangles. Easy to sew together."
And most blocks follow similar "rules." But until someone shows you or you sit down and figure it out, you are stuck with relying on other quilters' designs.
The thing is, it doesn't take long to figure it all out. And you don't need to know any math - either complicated math or easy math.
You just need to draw some straight lines. And you can do that with a simple pencil and ruler on graph paper.
And it helps to have someone walk you through it - with some specific examples.
Your Quilting Horizon Will Expand -
Once You Know How to Draw Your Own Quilt Blocks
Once I found the right book, studied it for a while, and tried it out, I discovered that it was really easy to draw my own blocks and make templates exactly the size I wanted them.
Who says that blocks need to be 9 inches, or 12 inches? Just the pattern maker because that's the size she decided to make it.
When you know how to draw your own blocks, you can take a 9 inch block and make it 8 inches, or 13 inches, if you want to. You don't need to do any math, or search the internet for templates. And you can make your own in a matter of minutes, with a few simple tools.
And maybe you have some quilting software that creates templates for you. I do.
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| Utility Quilt Block - the quilt design software I used created templates that were an odd size for the squares in this block. I drew my own templates, and they were 2 inches finished size. |
But, funny thing, when I was making the Fat Quarter Quilt, I used the software to draw my templates only to discover that - (I guess) because the square patches were on point, the pattern called for me to cut patches 2 9/16 inches square.
I decided that was too difficult to measure, and it didn't make sense that they would be such a strange size.
So I drew my own templates, and sure enough, they really should have been cut to be 2 1/2 inches square. And the finished block was 12 inches square, just the size I wanted it to be.
And it wasn't just that my computer printer made them the wrong size - the rotary cutting instructions called for the 2 9/16 inch measurement!
Plus, this isn't some original quilt block. It's called Utility Block and has been around for decades.
The thing is - when you draw your own templates, you get the size quilt block you want, and because of the process, you know that your patches will fit together perfectly (if you sew them right).
Plus, if you want, you can make some really odd shaped patches for your quilt block.
The point is that knowing how to draw your own quilt blocks expands your quilting horizons. It's easier to sew blocks together because you understand how they are designed. And you can create your own blocks.
And speaking of expanding your quilting horizons - another thing you can do is experiment with color in blocks in a quilt.
The Bachelor's Puzzle Quilt Block above is one coloring in a quilt I made several years ago. The quilt has 5 Bachelor's Puzzle blocks plus some pinwheel blocks.
As I was deciding how to make this quilt, the first thing I did was to create some small blocks on paper, and then color them using various color combinations - to see what they would look like. This allowed me to try several different color combinations of the Bachelor Puzzle quilt block as well as other blocks to see how I might like those in a quilt.
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| Several different quilt blocks colored in using various color combinations - including placement of dark, medium and light fabric | The finished quilt. |
So - How do You Learn How to Draw Your Own Blocks?
Like I said, years ago I found a book with all of the information in it. It was great because it explained the concept so I could understand it, and it had examples so I could actually see how it worked. But it is an old book and not that readily available.
 This calssic quilting resource will make designing a quilt fun and easy. |
Maybe you can imagine my delight when I discovered Quilter's Academy Vol. 2--Sophomore Year: A Skill-Building Course In Quiltmaking last year. It's all about how to design a quilt block and how to draw templates.
This is the second of a series written by expert professional quiltmaker, Harriet Hargrave, and her quilting daughter, Carrie.
Harriet has been around the quilting world for decades, and is one of the traditional quilters who has made a study of quilting techniques and products.
In the late 1990s, she was voted one of the "88 Leaders of the Quilt World."
Because she studies how quilting products "work" in quilts, manufacturers rely on her input as they develoop products.
So she is responsible for a myriad of products for machine quilting, batting and she has designed fabric for P&B Textiles.
And, I speak from personal experience. I took a workshop from Harriet at a Houston Quilt Festival I attended. She knows what she is talking about from her experience in quilting.
As she discussed various topics, she passed around quilts she made using the techniques and showing how they looked in her quilts.
Harriet's quilting daughter, Carrie, has been around quilting all her life—sitting in Harriet’s lap as a baby while Harriet sewed, learning her colors with machine embroidery thread and her alphabet on the cams of Harriet’s old Viking sewing machine.
Even though Carrie started college thinking she would be involved in range management and wildlife biology, her love of quilting changed her plans. Carrie is completing her masters' thesis on "The Physical Properties of Quilting Thread." And thread manufacturers around the world are looking to her for input to improve their products for quilters.
And, in fact, Carrie did a whole presentation about thread during the workshop in Houston.
The thing is, that both of these quilters come from a long line of quilting: Carrie is proud to carry on the family legacy of quilting that extends from her great-great-grandmother Phoebie Frazier, to her great-grandmother Harriet Carey, to her grandmother Harriet (Fran) Frazier, to her mom, Harriet.
Quilting is all about tradition (no matter how you make a quilt) and about the love of creating something beautiful from fabric and thread with your own hands.
With that extensive background, you can imagine how much information will be included in this new resource.
I was so excited about this resource, that it was Penny's Inner Circle Quilting Resource of the Month in www.TheQuiltingCoach.com last year.
This must-have course guides you step by step through designing a quilt and drawing the templates you need to make the quilt blocks for your quilt.
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In Quilters' Academy, Vol. 2, you will get:
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If you are at all serious about making quilts, this is a resource you must have in your library - whether you ever draw your own templates or not.
Simply by turning the pages of this resource and seeing how quilt blocks are constructed, you will understand how to make your quilts so they go together easier and you will have more fun making them.
Whether you are a beginning quilter or a quilter with more experience, this brand new resource has tons of valuable information that will inspire your quilting for years to come.
Quilter's Academy Vol. 2--Sophomore Year: A Skill-Building Course in Quiltmaking is available at amazon.com:
Happy Quilting!
Penny Halgren
Master Quilter
I used these techniques to draw the templates for this quilt, too.
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You can draw your own templates to create this type of quilt in any size you like!
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