Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 | By Lisa Swenson Ruble | 4 Comments

Are You a Quilt Designer?

Do you make quilts strictly from patterns, or have you branched out to design your own? While every quilt is a learning experience, I feel that you learn sooo much more from working on your own design (unfortunately, sometimes the things you learn are what not to do!). When you use an existing pattern, the math is not an issue, nor (unless you’re tweaking the design) do you have to play around with sashing strip and border widths. Your main concerns are with fabric choices: color, contrast and motif sizes.

For me, at least, when I create my own pattern, the process is filled with constant second guessing as I stare at my design wall. Is that piece too wide? Should I rotate the block this way or that way? Do I even like this at all?

I have found two things that help: First, taking a picture of what’s on the wall and looking at a smaller version on my computer. This is the ”high tech” modern version of a reducing glass, something many quilters use. Second, showing that picture to some of my quilting friends for some additional opinions (I don’t live near to my quilting friends, so email is a great tool!).

Because we all like show and tell, I’m including a couple quilts I’ve designed here, along with a little background on the process/problems I encountered for each.

Caterpillar Quilt

I loved this fabric when it came out but hadn’t seen a pattern for it that really excited me. I wanted to make a quilt for a charity event using it, so I decided to make my own. The biggest challenge here was finding some way to frame the three panel sections since the sizes weren’t consistent.

Stepping Stones Quilt

This is the first quilt I designed for a magazine (Quilt, June-July 2008). I was really nervous because I wanted it to be worthy of publication. I spent a lot of time rotating the blocks to create different patterns in the rows.

Urban Farm Quilt

I fell in love with this fabric. I’d sketched out a design I was happy with and pieced the quilt top. After it was assembled, I decided it would work better as a table topper than a wall hanging and had to rip out two of the four block centers to re-orient them.

Have you designed your own quilts? What challenges have you run into?

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Share with us one of your original designs!

On our website homepage, go to our new sharing page under Community/Quilt Submissions, follow the instructions and upload a picture of your beautiful quilt!

Lisa Swenson Ruble