Design a Quilt, Fast Project Part 1

My personal challenge!

 

So how do I Design a Quilt?

On the evening before Thanksgiving Day, 2014,  I gave myself a challenge.  I was sitting in the family room with my Dear Husband and realized that I we were snuggling under quilts made by other people.  What’s up with that, I thought?  So, I said to myself, “I’m gonna make me a quilt for ME and Dear Hubby”.

On Thanksgiving Day, at 12:30 p.m., I started a new lapquilt.

 

 

 

Here are the parameters for my challenge:

  1. Make a lapquilt for my home and finish it by Saturday–including the quilting and binding.   3 days total.
  2. Use only fabrics and batting I had in my house–no new purchase allowed
  3. No patterns–had to be my own design
  4. Use a different palette than my normal ombres and vivid prints

Now, I do like to work really fast–once I have a design in mind, I’m off to the races!  My problem is to stay focused and not get too distracted by other possible projects, watching episodes of Murdoch Mysteries or some other British or European mystery TV show on Amazon or wherever.  Thank heavens for the Roku to give me lots of excuses for distractions.

 

How I began:

Step 1: Stash Diving!!   I decided that I wanted to work with a different palette.  I had some layer cakes and jelly rolls that I purchased a few months ago at two of my local quilt shops.   They were Elementary by Moda, Figures by Moda and a fat quarter of a fabric with images of Paris.  The brown, taupe, green and aqua colors were a combination that I don’t normally use.  I added some other fabrics that I had in the house including a 2nd french themed fabric–it has handwriting in French on it.  The Paris & other french fabric is special because we spent some lovely vacations in that City.  I also thought about and then discarded the 5 inch squares but I do have another design idea using them.

Fabrics
Fabrics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: The design.  To make it fast I decided to use 10 inch squares as the cut block size–it’s much faster to cut on the whole inch rather than fiddle with measuring the half inch.

So, I cut about several  layer cakes and the Paris fabric down to 10 inch squares. I started auditioning the squares on the design wall.  OK–another myth buster--that you have to cut blocks with a quarter inch seam allowance!

sewing rail fence strips
sewing rail fence strips

 

 

 

I then used the jelly rolls and made rail fences that I cut into 10 inch squares.  Very fast piecing!  See the alternating layout below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lap quilt design wall 1
Starting the Layout on the Design wall
Filling in the Design
Filling in the Design

 

Stay tuned for Part 2 and a surprise addition!!

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