Two very different ways to design a quilt

In an earlier post I confessed that I rarely plan my quilts very much. But that does not mean there is no design process at all. Over the years I have used two very different ways to design a quilt surface.

Traditional quilt design

For the longest time, I thought that this was the only possible process for designing and sewing a quilt:

1. Choose a block design, perhaps two different ones

2. Choose the colours (and fabrics) for the block/blocks, which will all be similar. Note that this usually meant an expensive trip to the fabric store.

3. Cut all the pieces for the blocks

4. Sew the blocks, organise the blocks into a surface according to your plan or pattern and sew them together.

5. Design done, quilt top done.

Somehow, this felt rather demanding, but I still believed that this was the way quilts were supposed to be designed. And that’s how I sewed my first quilt, a twin-sized quilt for our newly renovated bedroom.

Because we had done a bit of interior decorating in the bedroom (new wallpapers and curtains), I felt that the situation called for a REAL quilt. I had found a pattern, and with small pieces of the new wallpapers and a swatch of the curtain fabric, I went to choose beautifully coordinating farbrics from the nearby store.

The colours of the fabrics looked great. I proceeded to cut ALL the pieces and then sewed my blocks and finally the quilt top. I managed to quilt it and finished it, but when I saw it on the bed, I felt disappointed.

Years later I understood that my quilt did not have enough value contrast. It felt flat.

Because the result was not a soaring success in my eyes and I didn’t understand why, I was reluctant to start another project which would require a big investment in fabrics up front. After all, there was no guarantee that I could pick the fabrics any better than before.

More importantly though, I did not enjoy the process of making a quilt that way.

My go-to design process

Luckily I eventually found the quilt design process that suits me. The process includes things like: 

• Choosing fabrics and cutting pieces for one block or at maximum, a few blocks at a time 
• Sewing together a few blocks at a time 
• Having only a few, vague visions of which colours to use for the blocks. (I may decide a colour that I’ll use somewhere in every block, or decide on the values of the block pieces.) 
• Sewing enough blocks for a size that I find useful.

The design part of my process is rather simple: I take the blocks I’ve made and organise them into an order that looks good enough to me.

The more intentional phase of the process

Because I want my design to look intentional (though the creation process may not have been), I usually sort the blocks into three or four stacks according to value. Darks, mid-values, lights – or possibly darks, dark mediums, light mediums, lights.

After the sorting, I take the stack of the darkest blocks and use them for the lowermost rows. When there are no more darks, I continue with the mediums and finally the lights which go to the uppermost rows of the quilt.

I usually take a photo at this phase and see if something jumps up from the surface. Or I may switch the places of a few blocks to achieve a nice pool of colour somewhere.

Sometimes I want to have the lightest fabrics in the center, then continue with mediums around that “pool of light,” and place the darkest blocks to the outer edges of the quilt.

A variation of organising blocks according to value is possible if your blocks have a “background” that varies in value. For example, I organised the blocks in my Jackpot quilt according to their background value.

I still remember how exciting it was to design that quilt. I needed the blocks to be placed in a strict order according to the background colour, but I also wanted the coloured circles to be in some kind of colour order.

Luckily I’d happened to make a suitable number of yellow-circle blocks and was able to group them together. That alone made the design look intentional and not random.

Another example of a design that took advantage of the value in one part of the block is Talisman (or the first version, Herkkupalat). I chose three different values of gray for the edge pieces of the simple block. When the blocks with the darkest edge pieces are in the lowermost rows, mediums are in the middle and lights are at the top, the completed quilt top will appear to feature an ombré shadow effect.

* Small promotional note: You can make your own Talisman quilt using my pattern – find the instantly downloadable PDF pattern for Talisman in Tilkkunen webshop

I may also sort my blocks according to colour. For example, if some blocks are of a certain colour and look brighter than the others, I may put those blocks together somewhere on the surface. Then I’ll continue with the neighbouring colours around that colour until I reach the edges.

This is my More Is More quilt. Because I used scraps almost exclusively, I did not plan the overall colours for the quilt: I only looked at one block at a time. The process was completely random in terms of colour. Even so, I was able to create a “blue side” and a “red side” to my quilt in the block organising phase.

Because I usually don’t have a big design wall, only a design floor, I cannot build the design as I go. I must trust the process of making the number of blocks that I need, then being able to organise them into a good enough overall design.

In fact, one of the best moments in quilting is when I first see all the blocks together in a design.

Final words

These are just two processes that I’ve used when designing quilts. There are others, such as planning the quilt colours and positions of every piece beforehand. And finding the quilt design process that suits you makes a big difference!

What is your favourite process? Or are you still figuring out what the right one is for you?

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