The cutting is my least favorite part of the quilting process, but accuracy is key or the remainder of the project will give you problems. I use a rotary cutter and standard 6 x 24 acrylic ruler. I don’t have any process shots of the cutting because generally I’m anxious to be done with that part!
One the individual blocks have come together you have to decide how you want to arrange them, if you are not following a pattern. If you are following a pattern, it will tell you what to do, but I wasn’t so I had to play around with the layout and see what looks best. From there I continued to make the blocks out of the colors and patterns I still needed.
The sketch I did originally called for solid green squares in between the bowties.
But I decided that was too much green and not as interesting (my client agreed, so we had the bowties directly next to each other. Which meant cutting more fabric! Oh well, the outcome was way better.
The next thing was to decide if I should make the placement of the patterns random or the same across diagonally.
I decided to make them random.
So the next thing was to layout the completed random blocks and then sew them together!
Here is the completed bowtie part of the top! Then I started to play around with the size and font of the letters that would be appliqued along the side and bottom.
Applique step is tomorrow!
Barb
Thursday 26th of January 2012
I love your bow ties, looks fantastic.