Does this look familiar? This is how all of my quilts used to begin. I'll admit it was kinda fun the first time, seeing a quilt come together on paper. But the novelty of it started to wear off two hours later when I was on my fourth draft and I realized I'd just drawn a complex block upside-down ... for an entire row. And I hadn't even started in with the coloring yet:
Not to mention the mind-boggling math involved in determining how much fabric is needed to make your painstakingly-designed custom quilt:
In short, designing a quilt in the traditional way using graph paper, colored pencils and 8th grade geometry is frustrating and tedious. I know it's supposed to take elbow grease to make a quilt, but does it have to require so much WORK just to plan your quilt?
That's where Quiltivate comes in. I don't think it should be such a chore to plan your quilt. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could pick the quilt block you want to use, design your entire quilt online, then get fabric calculations and pictures of the quilt you're getting ready to make? It's like a kit you'd buy in a fabric shop or from your favorite designer on Etsy, but the difference is that it's YOUR design and your unique quilt. The only "work" involved in making a Quiltivate-designed quilt is actually doing the sewing.
Check this out - we're doing a charity quilt in the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild and a couple of the ladies have already made their blocks using the Dutchman's Puzzle block, so if I want to design my blocks using the same block and need to know how much fabric I'll need, it's easy to do that on Quiltivate.
First, I go to the Quiltivate home page and do a search on all the quilt blocks starting with a "D:"
Looks like Dutchman's Puzzle is the last "D" block on Page 2:
On the Dutchman's Puzzle block page, click anywhere indicated to jump right into the Quilt Builder:
You see your block here with the color wheel on the right?
You can choose any colors to fill in your block - and that's just the beginning! The Quilt Builder lets you completely design your quilt, including block, borders, backing and binding. When you're finished you can get a print-out of the quilt and quilt block you designed as well as detailed fabric calculations for your entire quilt. The whole process takes less than five minutes. Check out this quick video for an overview of the whole Quilt Builder:
So, what's the hold-up? Pick from over 225 blocks, or start now on your Dutchman's Puzzle quilt.
Don't you think it's time to throw out the graph paper? Go ahead and pitch the aspirin while you're at it.
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