In June at my quilt guilds quiltshow I purchased a set of fatquarters with blocks with pictures and several coordinating fabric fat quarters. Now the question is, what the heck do I do with them. Keepsake quilting has such lovey medleys of fabric fat quarters, but I never know what to do with them in a quilt. So any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I would like to us as much of the fabric as I can since I paid a good penny for the fabric.
The pictures are not square but a rectangle. So any ideas?
Ann, have you seen M'Liss Rae Hawley's FQ books? There are other people who have written books specifically aimed at FQs, too, but I have one of MRH's, and it's very good.
Sandy Foster wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.west.earthlink.net:
I was going to suggest my new FQ book by Darlene Zimmerman but I'm fairly annoyed with it. A lot of the directions don't tell me what actual size to cut but instead refer one to "Easy Angle triangles". If you don't have one and don't know what they are the directions are fairly useless. The quilts are very pretty though.
There's a book to address this very problem: Fat Quarter Quilts. Good for inspiration. Carol Doak's Easy Stash Quilts is also very good for moving FQs into production. For your rectangular picture blocks, you could set them in a "square", i.e. same number of blocks across and down, and it would automatically come out rectangular. Alternate the pictures with any simple square block the same width as your picture blocks (stars, pinwheels, 9-patch, whatever) to which you add 2 strips of fabric so they are also rectangles. (Or add 1 wider strip and turn some of them up and some down.) This is just off the top of my head, not knowing what your fabrics look like! Roberta in D
"ann" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
That all depends on what kind of quilt tops you enjoy. There are a lot of books out about fat quarter quilts, but the quilts all look way too string-happy for my taste.
I'd be more inclined to either use the fabrics for applique pieces or perhaps make a few cuts and make a charm type quilt. A fat quarter can be used to make four large maple or oak leaves for an applique leaf quilt. You could also cut several large rectangles out of a fat quarter and use them to make a quick and easy brick quilt. Other charm type quilts are Shell, Spool, Kite, and Tumbler. I figure that using larger pieces, and using the same print for more than one piece in the quilt top, would make a charm type quilt will look more planned and less scrappy than usual.
Another possibility is to cut each piece of fabric in half and then add other fabric strips on two sides to make Attic Windows blocks, or add strips all around it for a block called Picture Window. Both of those a quick blocks and you wouldn't lose much of the fabric in the cutting stage or in the seams.
You could use the fat quarter fabrics for the centers of a lot of blocks like Evening Star, Joyce's Mystery Block, Dove of Peace, Frame, Square Dance, Friendly Pleasures, and Dewey blocks just to name a few. You could either cut square centers for square blocks, or shake things up a bit and make rectangle centers for elongated blocks. For an elongated block draw out the block first so you can get the proper size and shape for all the other block pieces.
I don't know if you like the style, but crazy quilting is kinda fun. Cut a decent sized piece of one of your fat quarters and surround it with other, coordinating fabrics. Just use some sort of "foundation" such as a thin piece of muslin or interfacing. If you stick with some sort of theme for the center of each block or some specific color scheme, the blocks can look really amazing and go together beautifully. I have a good friend who creates the most incredible quilts using this technique.
I just got the book 11 Laps from Fats and fell in love with one of the patterns that called for 13 fats. Put a lapsize together in about 6 hours and have 3 other sets picked out and ready to go! There were hardly any seams to match in the pattern I chose, so that made me even happier with the end result!
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