I'm new to the whole quilting thing, and someday I'll post my first finished quilt - affectionately known at my house as "The Worst Quilt In The World". I can say that I learned A LOT making it, and I can't wait to finish piecing the two(!) I've got stacked in my sewing room right now.
But for now, I thought I'd share something pretty cool. At least, I think it's pretty cool. I hope you do, too. It's this:
I like to design quilts almost as much as I like making them. The color choices, patterns, and shapes are like puzzle pieces in my head, and I love love love that the possibilities are so endless. I started out doodling on graph paper, but this weekend I found myself with time to kill and no graph paper. I did have my laptop, however, and a free program called GIMP. It's neat, but there's a heck of a learning curve. I know just enough to do a few things, and I'm nowhere near as proficient as some other folks.
Anyways, I decided to play around and try to come up with a quilt design template. That's that thing up there. I count each block as a 5" square, just because my brain likes that number. That makes every numbered row a 10" block, perfect for charm packs and layer cake...packs? Stacks? Slices? I dunno, but you get my drift.
Why was I doing all this, you ask? Well, the Big Man's birthday is coming up, and I had a few ideas for a quilt. Unfortunately, I need to see geometry with my eyes. It won't work in my head. The circles roll away, the triangles are all sharp and pointy, and the squares fall flat. It gets dangerous in there. So I either doodle the patterns, or in this case, use that graph up there.
For the birthday guy, I chopped that thing up there in half and used this:
But for now, I thought I'd share something pretty cool. At least, I think it's pretty cool. I hope you do, too. It's this:
I like to design quilts almost as much as I like making them. The color choices, patterns, and shapes are like puzzle pieces in my head, and I love love love that the possibilities are so endless. I started out doodling on graph paper, but this weekend I found myself with time to kill and no graph paper. I did have my laptop, however, and a free program called GIMP. It's neat, but there's a heck of a learning curve. I know just enough to do a few things, and I'm nowhere near as proficient as some other folks.
Anyways, I decided to play around and try to come up with a quilt design template. That's that thing up there. I count each block as a 5" square, just because my brain likes that number. That makes every numbered row a 10" block, perfect for charm packs and layer cake...packs? Stacks? Slices? I dunno, but you get my drift.
Why was I doing all this, you ask? Well, the Big Man's birthday is coming up, and I had a few ideas for a quilt. Unfortunately, I need to see geometry with my eyes. It won't work in my head. The circles roll away, the triangles are all sharp and pointy, and the squares fall flat. It gets dangerous in there. So I either doodle the patterns, or in this case, use that graph up there.
For the birthday guy, I chopped that thing up there in half and used this:
to make this:
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| The man loves peppermint candy. |
I numbered the rows differently and played around with it, and it was a lot of fun. However, I still love my graph paper and pens, so I'll probably print these things out and use them in the real world. The basic "peppermint" block wasn't my idea, but the placement was all my own (I think). Pay no attention to the numbers at the bottom - that's my own weird system of figuring out what fabric I'll need.
Feel free to use anything on this page. Just right click and save any of the images you like. Print 'em, play with 'em, have a ball.
Which do you like better: pen and paper, or software?
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