Drafting for the Creative Quilter

76 DRAFTINGFORTHECREATIVEQUILTER

Translating the Design to Fabric
Then it was time to sew the blocks. My color palette
was magenta, blue, teal, and gold. I made a rough-cut
mock-up and used mirrors to compose and see each
block’s color composition before cutting and sewing the
fabric. (Refer to the Sampler Supreme project instruc-
tions on pages 99–115 and Rough-Cut Mock-up and
Mirrors on page 91.) I photographed each block’s mock-
up to show what I did. Only a portion—in most cases
one-eighth—of the design needs to be mocked up to see
the complete block in the mirrors.

As I sewed the blocks, I made two more changes. I
added one more grid of space to the Spiraling Squares
block because I wanted to place it inside a circle and
then square it. I also discovered when I drafted and
sewed the hexagon cube that it was not square but rect-
angular, which adjusted the number of grids it would
occupy from 4 × 4 to 4 × 5 grids.

Composing on the Design Wall
Once I had assembled all the blocks, I moved to the
design wall. Based on my second sketch, I roughly sec-
tioned off my design wall by pinning tape measures
vertically and horizontally, so I would know the actual
size of the total design area. I then divided the design
area into quadrants to guide me when positioning the
blocks and the filler rectangles. If you do not have mul-
tiple tape measures, draw chalk lines or cut some narrow
fabric strips to create the outline. Although this might
not be necessary for everyone, if I don’t do this, the
design drifts out of alignment, and I find myself con-
stantly moving and shifting the folded filler fabrics.

Section off a design wall with tape measures.

Photo by author

I pinned Sketch #2 to the design wall and used it as my

guide for block and filler fabric placement and size. I

placed the sewn blocks on the design wall and started

filling in the space around them by roughly folding

uncut pieces of fabric to the approximate size according

to my sketch. In this quilt, I folded all the fabrics to

approximately 11/2 ̋ wide (grid value); their length was

determined by the number of grids they occupied in the

drawing (1 grid wide by 6 grids long is 11/2 ̋ × 9 ̋).

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Originally I had a different block design in the posi-

tion where the Trip Around the World is now. The

original block, once in place with the others, was

too large, too light, and drew too much attention.

I replaced it with the Trip Around the World block,

using smaller pieces and lower contrast.

During this process, I made a couple more minor refine-

ments and then drew a final Sketch #3, which reflects

cutting numbers for each rectangle in the background.

When this process was complete, I was thrilled with

how my quilt looked (this takes considerable time for

me, sometimes weeks). I carefully examined Sketch #3

to determine the sewing sequence. I looked for long

seams and began making X’s on sections that could be

sewn independently. During this process, I sometimes

add seamlines to simplify construction and then join the

sections to complete the quilt top.