Changing a pattern size - longish

Yaaay thank you! NOw to see if she likes it....

Deep and meaningful, yes, there are those secrets known only to the wise and aged amongst us. heehee.. nah.. you go ahead and change what you want. The more blocks you put in it the more border material you will need, but its ok to change ...well...anything you like on a design. Go for it! ..double check your math on the borders, but this is something even the QP wont bother to look twice at. :-) Diana

Try playing with it in EQ4 or 5 - if you have, else invest in a large pad of squared paper, a roll of sellotape and a box of colouring pencils ...

Do the measurements have to be adhered to *exactly*? If she wants a queen sized quilt, my feelings are that an extra inch either way isn't going to make a lot of difference... can you use batting on the roll instead of a pack of batting? in which case you can piece 2 bits together to give you the size you need.

For an additional 5 inches on the length, you could increase the width of the borders a tad, the thin borders by an inch and the thicker border by 2 inches. That'll give you an extra 10 inches on the width of the quilt as well, leaving you 10 inches spare to make the width up to 95 inches. (Hope to god I've got the measurements the right way round here!)

The 10 inches spare on the width could be used up at 2.5 inches each on the plain, which might make it a little unbalanced, so you might want to consider another 2 pinwheel columns, to give you

border-pin-plain-pin-plain-pin-plain-pin-plain-pin-border.

You may have to decrease the width of all the plain columns to make the maths work out here!

If the borders are plain fabric rather than patterned, you now have a patterned column right next to the first column of the central pattern, rather than a plain column, which IMHO could be more aesthetically pleasing (thats a long word for a Sunday morning!).

I think the main trick to altering a pattern to fit another size is to keep it symmetrical and balanced - lengthening some parts and widening others but keeping it the same on all four sides so that it works. As the advertising blurb on a pack of giant kids balloons I once saw said,

"Run with it, dance with it, have fun with it"!!!

HTH, Suzie B

-- "From the internet connection under the pier" Southend, UK

Thank you thank you! I've sent in the pattern with her today as well as 2 others so we'll soon find out!!