Making a quilt from a drawing

Hi Melody!

 

I've always wanted to make art quilts. I'm in college for art now, I'm an avid drawer an I've been sewing for the last 14 years.  I've only done a few quilts and they were all very simple.  How do you transfer a design from your idea drawn on paper to a quilt?  I feel like I'm making everything too hard on myself and finding the most difficult methods to do this. Do you have any tips you could give me?

Thanks,

Brooke

www.beatknit.blogspot.com

Dear Brooke,

My sister’s name is Brooke and it makes me so happy to see another Brooke interested in quilting. Yippee!

Here’s the easy way.

1.     Scan your drawing into your computer and then print it out on a transparency. I get my transparencies from Office Max and they are made to be used with a home printer. They come in a pack of 20 for like $10.

2.       Get an overhead projector. Yeah, I know, it’s not like this is something you have ever needed before. But you will use it more than you ever expected once you get one. They are available sometimes for really cheap from school districts or libraries or businesses. I got mine from Office Max, originally I paid $400, but now the same model is like $150, so this is now a superfantastic bargain.

3.      OR, take your drawing to a copy center and have them enlarge it. I know that Emily Parson gets her major drawings enlarged at Kinko’s and she makes quilts that are like 80” square.

 

So then you have this drawing enlarged to size, and then you wonder (key word: wonder) how do I proceed?

1.     Gather the fabrics you want to use. (If this were me, I would only be using my hand dyed fabrics since I would be fusing, and hand dyed fabrics work best for fusing…but that is me.)

2.   Fuse the fabrics, using Wonder-Under, and then carefully peel off the paper and use that paper (now referred to as release paper) to trace the shapes you need to cut from your fabrics. Then refer to this post on my August blog.

3.    Take pictures and post for all the world to see.