turning 30 project - vol. II

on with the project. here is a list of what i wanted for the quilts:

- i wanted to create the design myself

- i wanted each quilt to contain a piece of everyones fabric

- i wanted each quilt to have it's own personality; to be an expression of it's owner

- i wanted the design to be fun and modern

i took my inspiration from Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston's books "Collaborative Quilting" and "Freddy & Gwen Collaborate Again".

these books are really fun. gwen and freddy use liberated piecing techniques (gwen has written a couple of books on this technique) and they use bright fun colors. freddy says in the first book that 'ten colors don't work - 100 do'. the two of them have breathe life into the quilting tradition. a definite good read! scoot on down to your nearest independent quilt store and pick them up. just having them on your shelf make you smile a bit bigger. (i decided today that i've got to purchase the second one. i've checked it out from the library 6 times!)

here are two specific images from the books that i pulled from for inspiration.

i have plenty of sketches in my quilting design journal, probably too many to share, but here are a couple of them. the second one is the one i ended up using as my final design.

i redrew this to finalize the design and to plan out the center block. the majority of the quilt would spotlight the fabric of the person the quilt was for as well as some coordinate fabrics that i picked out. the center block would then include the remaining 6 fabrics of everyone else in the group. each quilt would have the same design but the fabrics in the center block would rotate in each quilt. it's kind of hard for me (a very visual person) to explain this in a blog post! lol. as the quilts get finished and posted, it will start to make sense. so i used this drawing to number the squares and plan for the placement of the center blocks in each quilt.

i made 7 copies of the master design (before i wrote all over it) and used it as color layout for each one of the quilts. i wanted to make sure that there was no confusion later in the process.

this proved to be extremely helpful throughout this project. having something to refer to was fabulous. i have to write everything down as i go so i remember later, as illustrated in the next picture. this was my master list for all my measurements. sometimes along the way measurements change or i have to make adjustments. when working on seven quilts at the same time that have the same design it is really important that i remember changes i make.

notice i have an urgent reminder to double all measurements! then i crossed it out....plans changed.

i also made a design and measurement layout for the back of the quilt. again, they will all be the same design. there will be boxes down one side of the back. they are a sample of each of the fabrics that people picked and they are bordered by the coordinate fabric that i picked for each of them. they will be placed in birth order (the same order we will all turn 30) in case we forget over time who's is who's. we'll just have to remember the order in which we were born.

read the next installment here:

turning 30 project - vol. III