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Working without a pattern
Feb. 22nd, 2017 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmneI highly encourage patternless quilt design as a great way to create real quilted art and unique creations. I haven'et found good way to coach on how to do that, so I thought I'd explain how I do it through an example.
t rarely use a pattern, although I occasionally make one. Most often I have a concept. Sometimes I make blocks but never the same one throughout except once when I did a one piece quilt, that is, the same irregular quarter of a square throughout, all in pinks and reds. I've contributed blocks to group quilts and those often used a pattern. I've cone some process blocks - usually multiple ones in the same quilt and scrappy, but I don't know how I;m going to combine them until I get to that stage in the process.
My latest quilt, latest to finish that is, was a concept quilt I stated three and half years ago (that pretty quick for me. I've done UFOs that were nearly thirty years old.). I cut strips and individual squares from 1-1/2 up to 12-1/2 and most of the usual sizes in between. I sewed the smaller strips side-by-see in sets of one, two, up to six I think strips, then sliced them up and combined them with strips or blocks the same size in one direction (e.g six one inch strips with a six inch block or a pair of three inch squares. I aimed for rectangles that were 6x8 or 6x9 or rectangles of 6, 8, or 9 by 12 and ended up with more variation than that. I kept growing the blocks and combining the smaller ones into increasingly bigger ones until I had about a dozen blocks of various sizes plus various leftovers.
Then I gridded out what I had left, added the leftovers to the sides or ends of the larger rectangles until I could put two next to each other to make another larger rectangle (same length and/or width together) until Ihad four pieces. I could line up two and two, and then those with one point of zig-zag toward the center to make the two halves of the quilt, and sewed those two together with some care around the zig zag.
I left it at that for a long time but finally got around to the next stage this past November. I put together a backing that wasn't quite big enough and started quilting, eventually added more backing pieces and shortened the quilt to bring it down to 92 by 98. The trimmed end pieces were turned into top and bottom bindings. For the side bindings I used a dark blue print to bring out the blues and provide a sharp contrast to all the yellows and oranges and reds. I finished the quilting just over a week ago, then the binding, with some painted embellishments and embroidery-type quilting along the way. Hopefully I will shortly figure out how to post the picture!
t rarely use a pattern, although I occasionally make one. Most often I have a concept. Sometimes I make blocks but never the same one throughout except once when I did a one piece quilt, that is, the same irregular quarter of a square throughout, all in pinks and reds. I've contributed blocks to group quilts and those often used a pattern. I've cone some process blocks - usually multiple ones in the same quilt and scrappy, but I don't know how I;m going to combine them until I get to that stage in the process.
My latest quilt, latest to finish that is, was a concept quilt I stated three and half years ago (that pretty quick for me. I've done UFOs that were nearly thirty years old.). I cut strips and individual squares from 1-1/2 up to 12-1/2 and most of the usual sizes in between. I sewed the smaller strips side-by-see in sets of one, two, up to six I think strips, then sliced them up and combined them with strips or blocks the same size in one direction (e.g six one inch strips with a six inch block or a pair of three inch squares. I aimed for rectangles that were 6x8 or 6x9 or rectangles of 6, 8, or 9 by 12 and ended up with more variation than that. I kept growing the blocks and combining the smaller ones into increasingly bigger ones until I had about a dozen blocks of various sizes plus various leftovers.
Then I gridded out what I had left, added the leftovers to the sides or ends of the larger rectangles until I could put two next to each other to make another larger rectangle (same length and/or width together) until Ihad four pieces. I could line up two and two, and then those with one point of zig-zag toward the center to make the two halves of the quilt, and sewed those two together with some care around the zig zag.
I left it at that for a long time but finally got around to the next stage this past November. I put together a backing that wasn't quite big enough and started quilting, eventually added more backing pieces and shortened the quilt to bring it down to 92 by 98. The trimmed end pieces were turned into top and bottom bindings. For the side bindings I used a dark blue print to bring out the blues and provide a sharp contrast to all the yellows and oranges and reds. I finished the quilting just over a week ago, then the binding, with some painted embellishments and embroidery-type quilting along the way. Hopefully I will shortly figure out how to post the picture!
