My photos from the Vermont Quilt Festival have been scattered between three computers, and I need to be in the same place with all three computers in order to get them condensed into one flowing blog post.
It’s not easy! but I think I’ve got it down!
I wanted to take a moment and thank and congratulate those quilters who submitted quilts from my designs into the show. It was just so awesome seeing your work up close and personal, turning the corner and coming face to face with quilt designs we’ve come to know and love so well, each with your own twist on them.
They are like familiar friends, made with different fabric, but cut from the same cloth!
I loved this beautiful Smith Mountain Morning from Scraps & Shirttails II.
Lesley calls her quilt Stars in the Woods!
And she won 2nd place!
Hello, Texas Tumbleweed!
Pattern from MORE Adventures with Leaders & Enders!
Charlet Sherman calls her version First Ten Years.
Great job, Charlet!
Easy Street by Shelley Beyer!
Pattern also found in MORE Adventures with Leaders & Enders.
NOT SO EASY Street!!
I love it Shelley, congrats!
We also had quite a bit of show & share happening after our lunch breaks on our workshop days!
The first couple of days we even took a “field trip” to outside for our show & share unveiling because the weather was oh, so nice. And since my visit to Sacramento a few weeks ago, I do believe that quilts are best photographed in natural light, and outside is wonderful as long as it is not raining, humid, or extremely hot.
I LOVED seeing what you made and brought to share!
Click the image below if you are unable to view the slide show on your mobile device. You’ll be taken to the photo album for viewing.
I’m in the studio today.
I’m book writing today!
The hardest part about pattern writing? Figuring out just how much yardage any quilt will take if not made from scraps. It’s mind numbingly excruciating on my brain.
It goes like this…count the number of neutral 2.5” squares in this pattern. Let’s say there are 640 of them. How many squares per 40” strip? You can get 16 2.5” squares per 40” strip ((This allows for selvage trimming)) How many strips will it take to get all 640 if you get 16 squares per strip? 40 strips. 40 X 2.5 = 100 inches of fabric. 100 inches divided by 36 inches = a bit over 2 3/4 yards. So I’d say 3 yards for just that one cut.
And you do this for EVERY SINGLE SHAPE in the quilt –how many half square triangles down a 40” strip? How many rectangles, quarter square triangles, etc.
Yep. Yardage hell. But I’m there.
Quilt-Cam on THURSDAY evening 9pm Eastern!
20 comments:
I appreciate all your hard work.
We appreciate you going through yardage hell for all of us! Can hardly wait for the new book to come out.
Not sure this will help, but sometimes I create the quilt or a block on EQ7. Then I color the block units with contrasting colors so that all of one shape is the same color, a hst would be 2 different colors, etc. Then have EQ determine the yardage. It seems that every quilt show I attend, you are there with your great designs. Thanks for all you do.
I was thinking like Judy...use EQ7, assign a color to each shape then let EQ7 do the math/yardage. I'm a bit of a control freak and often need to do the math myself but I've found EQ7 has been accurate. Now I tend to just round up from their number, "just in case" (trust issues?) because we quilters don't mind having left-overs for more scrap quilts.
Bonnie, it must be so satisfying to see all of your quilt patterns being represented in quilt shows and festivals across the country!
You have definitely left your mark. If there were such a thing as a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD for quilting, I would give it to you!
sao in Midlothian, VA
Yep, that's the excruciating formula. Lucky for me I've just had to do that for blocks for samplers. And I'm out of practice now. lol. So looking forward to seeing new things, even though I'm still working on plenty of works in progress. We appreciate all you do!
Donna Fisher in Tallahassee, Florida
Oh Bonnie, that yardage figuring does not sound like fun. Seems like in the intro, you could say 'All my quilts are made from scraps. If you want to make it from yardage, here is how to figure out how much fabric you need....' THAT is what I would do!😀
I have always wanted to ask you this: do you ever get sidetracked? Do you ever find yourself wasting time, going from blog to blog? Or (heaven forbid!) playing Candy Crush?? Or Solitare?
You do the hard thinking for those of us who didn't enjoy the MATH. Who knew I would be a quilter who does math everyday now! Thursday for QuiltCAM, OK. I can switch my Binding time for that night. Loved the slideshow!
Quilter's math can really cause brain cramps. You'll get through it!!!
Excited for quilt cam!!!
Yeah, I'm doing that kind of math right now to see if I have enough fabric in my stash to do another Jared Takes a Wife. I want some uniformity in it. We can commiserate some time.
we'll press cold compresses to our foreheads when we have book in hand, thinking how lucky we were not to do all the calculation :)
That's our Bonnie, always willing to take the bullet for us...
All that computing sounds like a headache! Beautiful quilts! Looking forward to quilt cam!
That was enlightening. It never occurred to me that I could figure out the yardage requirements in that way. Not that I probably ever would. Way too much brain power. :) Thanks for doing it for us.
Sonia
Sontut@aol.com
I have 2 apps on my phone that do all that figuring: quiltingcalc and quiltref. Figures all that out in nano seconds.
I would set up a spreadsheet with you more often used shapes. Let the number of shapes (640) be a cell that is used in an equation in the next cell, so that it spits out your answer. Then just change the number of shapes for each color/block/pattern. Figure it out once & don't worry about it again. I started a sample spreadsheet in Google sheets. You should be able to see it at http://tinyurl.com/oadtndh or if you use http://preview.tinyurl.com/oadtndh you'll see the google url to know it is safe to click on. Right now, the spreadsheet is open just to comment and hopefully you can see the equations. Let me know if you like it but can't see the equations, as I'll open it to edit. Email me at k2sattlers @ comcast.net
Basically, the columns/equations are (using row 2 in my example)
column A = type
column b = width in inches
column c = height in inches
column d = quantity of blocks in quilt
column e is Number in a 40" strip =trunc(40/c2,0) which truncates all decimals and divides the height of the block into 40.
column f is Number of strips is the equation =d2/e2 where d2 is the quantity of blocks and the e2 is the results from the previous equation.
column g is yardage and the equation for that would be =(f2*b2)/36
I little more thinking will be needed for triangles.
Or like Judy in MI and Neverbored suggested, use EQ.
I just wanted to thank you for all the designs, and ideas you continually give to us all. I have also spent the last three days working on another of your ideas. I have re-sorted all my baskets of fabric so the fabric stands on it's edge enabling me to see each slice of fabric without having to unpack the whole box. Previous to doing this I had all my fabric placed one on top of the other. Thank you so much for the idea, which I am sure many of you have already been using. I am a bit slow I guess, but you can put it down to being a bit on the more mature side. I can't believe I re-packed 30 plastic bins! My husband asked me if I was going to set up a shop. I am just going to have to sew faster, faster, faster, faster........... Many thanks Bonnie. You are my hero! Dorothy, in Canberra, Australia.
dorothy@karman.id.au
Hi Bonnie. I hear you on the math part of quilting, especially because you use your scraps and don't really need to know this stuff. I loved the slide show and saw some of my favorite quilt patterns there. I love that gal's selvedge skirt. How cute!?!
Right away when I started quilting, I changed the design of the patterns to what I wanted to make. The math also started ! I am now pretty good about figuring them out but once in a while, I come up really too big or too small. Never do figure out what is wrong, and math is an exact science (except when I do it).
I saw all the lovely quilts, including yours Bonnie, though I missed your talk, I'm sure it was spectacular as always. Love the Vermont Quilt Festival and want to go back! Did you get to Ben & Jerry's??
Ha! Your "yardage hell" is my favorite part of quilting!
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