Hi everyone and welcome once again to Wednesday. It’s been a very quiet day around here, mainly because Damo and I both got food poisoning last night and we are feeling pretty ordinary today!! So not a lot going on at Casa Fielke, I’ve managed to WRITE StitchyMites and watch an endless loop of Friends, and Damo has POSTED StitchyMites and watched a bunch of Star Wars movies and slept. Ugh I hate being sick!
Anyway. We were talking last week about sketchbook and idea files, and this week I’ve promised a little insight into graph paper.
As patchworkers, everything we do can be reduced to a square. Even curves and organic shapes can be measured within the inch grid of a quilt design. This doesn’t just apply to quilting obviously, but it certainly has more resonance in quilt design than in some other places, mainly because of the block structure of most patchwork.
When I design with graph paper, not only am I working out shapes and decorative impact of the quilt, but also the maths for the pattern, and determining the size of my appliqué shapes. It's like I’m drawing a map for my self to follow as the quilt goes along.
The first thing I do is determine the size of my grid squares. Usually I make them 2”, so that I can fit a queen sized quilt onto the A2 grid pads I use. If the quilt is smaller or more detailed I might make them 1”, but never larger usually - mainly because making each one 4” means that there’s too much going on inside each little square for the plan to be useful to me.
Sometimes though, if there is a lot of detail I will plan the quilt out in a larger scale, and then break the smaller parts out and grid those too.
After 26 years of writing patterns professionally, things like how large the squares need to be cut to get quarter square triangles comes without having to think, so as I write the pattern that 2” square on the grid becomes my map for your instructions. I always have the grid, my notebook and the completed section of the quilt with me as I write, so that I can refer back, double check and measure as I go.
Here’s a few of the BOM quilt patterns over the years. You can see that sometimes they’re quite fleshed out, and sometimes just a reference for how many blocks and how large they are, but they all function the same way.
The Grasshopper
Simple Folk
When I did the sketch for Rainy Days and Sun Rays, I did it on my lightpad, with the graph at the back so that I could still see it to draw - that way I could have the pretty drawing ready to scan in to the computer without the grid behind it.
Rainy days
When I designed Big Woods, which is the BOM coming in August with Tula Pink, I fleshed the sketch out a little more than I would usually do with the leaves etc, because I had to show it to Free Spirit and to Tula before I started sewing, so they knew which direction I was going in. I felt that it was more important that they have the concept of the leafy frame around each block, than precisely which animal went where.
Things mostly stay the same in with these quilts, but they do sometimes change as I go - Big Woods originally had rounded corners and a Prairie Point border, but I ditched it!
Big Woods
When I designed Homeward Bound for The Quilt Show, I had to really flesh it all out for the management team over there, so this one is a very detailed grid, and a very neat and tidy sketch followed so that they could see my concept.
Homeward Bound
These things live in vivid colour inside my brain, so finding a way for others to see what I see is always an interesting challenge! I think thats why I launch my BOMs to the public as a black and white sketch - I don’t want anyone to see a colour way and think, oh no thats not for me. The black and white drawings allow everyone to have their own idea about what the finished quilt will look like. It’s a page of possibilities rather than a hard fact.
Next week I’m going to walk you through all the different steps that working on the design and colour choices for Stop, Thief! took as I went along! There’s a lot more of my sketches and plans available to show you for that one, because its still being made as we speak.
In case looking at all the pretty things above is making you want a new project, here’s some incentive! You can take 20% off all my BOM books using the code SMITES, until Tuesday February 6 at 5pm, Sydney time. Don’t forget that they drop ship from the printer in the USA, UK and Europe, so if you order just the book you aren’t paying international shipping (if you order books with other things, everything ships together from me in Aus).
Happy week peeps, take care and happy stitching
Sarah xx
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