Playing with quilt designs

Mr Teacakes looked bewildered as I tried to explain the possible quilt designs and fabric choices that I had in mind for Zebra-girl's new quilt (yes, it's the Anna Maria Horner Little Folks voiles quilt that has cropped up in previous posts). I think you need to design them on the computer...there's no other way of making a choice, he said eventually. The thought had occurred to me, but I'd dismissed it thinking that only my own indecision and lack of vision would cause me to go down such a route. So to be told by someone decisive and with good vision that it was the only way that one could possibly decide was all the encouragement I needed.

I think I may have spoken on quite a few occasions of my love of PowerPoint and Mr Teacakes' irritation at my unwillingness to move onto a more sophisticated design programme. The fact that I was able to create four different quilt designs in less than 90 stress-free minutes is all the confirmation I need of its continuing brilliance and downright fabulousness. I love it. I simply downloaded the fabric images from the Free Spirit website, filled some shapes with them and then rotated, aligned and dragged them around into place. I'd already sketched out my designs in a notepad, so it was simply a case of recreating them.

I loved being able to play around in this way without cutting into fabric. I actually incorporated many more prints and colour-ways than the ones shown here and was able to discount them, as when the whole 'quilt' is seen at once like this it was obvious they they were either too dark or added too much intensity to the design.

Which one do you like? I think my favourite one is this one below:

I've found this a difficult quilt to think about, because so many of the fabrics have stripes running through them. I feel like this design actually works with the stripes and makes a feature of them. It also allows me to easily use them in a way where I don't have to start getting stressed about trying to align them all.

And Mr Teacakes: I think you need to remember that you can re-size the fabrics on the computer, but not in real life. In two of the designs you've got the squares of flowers at two different sizes. Sweet Anna Maria for designing them that way...it makes them so very usable for both sewing and tricking husbands with, which is a very good thing indeed.

Florence x

Ps. I'm loving these new little buttons that Blogger have given us, that let you link to a post. The best thing is that when I just put this post on Twitter it automatically brought up the shortened link, leaving more of the 140 characters for chatter. Perfect.