Word quilts are making a resurgence, and I want to tell you how this book can help you make them, whether you use its alphabet or one of the many other alphabets that are available in our quilty world.*

First of all, Quilt Talk® has a FULL alphabet: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, special characters (all the ones above the numbers on your keyboard) and all the accent characters for Spanish and French languages.

It includes a chapter on how I do paper-piecing without using special rulers or tools, and how I pre-cut for paper-pieced letters to minimize fabric waste. I’ve had a lot of people write me about how easy my paper-piecing instructions are to follow, especially for paper-piecing newbies!

But the most useful parts of the book are probably the sections on how to SIZE your words and space your letters. Most letter patterns come in sizes that quickly get big, and if you want to say more than a few words you’re likely to end up with an unnecessarily huge quilt. This book covers the easy math for making the words come out the size YOU want them to be. And here’s the bonus… these concepts can be adapted to ANY alphabet patterns.

The book also has a great section on how to choose your fabric values and pattern textures for maximum impact. If you’re going to take the time to make a word quilt, let’s make sure it can be easily read!

So even if you’ve found another alphabet you want to try, Quilt Talk® will help you make the best use of it!

For a more detailed description of what the book covers, read here.

*And here’s a shout out to a few other alphabets available:

• Denyse Schmidt’s The Proverbial Quilt (print) (pdf)
• Tula Pink’s Modern Alphabet (pdf only)
• Elizabeth Hartman’s Refrigerator Magnets
• Diane Bohn’s (From Blank Pages) My First Alphabet and My ABC’s
• QuietPlay‘s extensive alphabet options

The post Quilt Talk® – a book for ANY word quilts appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I made this quilt recently, and when I posted it on Instagram (follow me here) a few people asked for a pattern. This isn’t exactly a pattern per se, but close! You’ll need my book Quilt Talk® for the letter patterns, but I’ve done the rest of the math for you: measurements and construction notes are below!

Begin by choosing the colors for your words. If you have a fat quarter of each you’ll have plenty. You might squeak by with a fat quarter of background, but I’d recommend having a half-yard on hand in case you decide to get fancy with how much background you put around the word block.

I chose my colors in a gradient, light to dark. I chose to make NEVER and THELESS in the same color to bring that word together, despite it being split across two lines. I don’t have KONA recommendations for you as I used a mixed bag of fabrics from my stash, and there are at least three different companies’ solids in my house! Make it your own – you’ll love it more!

If you haven’t already switched over to newsprint for your paper-piecing, this would be an excellent time to start as you’ll appreciate it on the smallest letters. It’s more see-through than regular copy paper, and tears off with far more ease. I use the Carol Doak Foundation Newsprint by C&T, but any newsprint that will go through your home printer will do.

The words are 17” wide (finished) and the interior word panel is 28” long (finished). I added a 2” border all round to make it 21” x 32”.

All the letters are CAPITALS.

The kerning/K-space (space between the letters) is a bit fussy, but happily, these things are easy to stretch a little with a hot iron, or ease, as needed.

Start by copying the letters:

• SHE x 2 – copy at 170% for 6.4” tall (just a hair bigger than 6 3/8”)
• WAS WARNED – copy at 50% for 1 7/8” tall
• NEVER – copy at 100% for 3 3/4” tall
• THELESS – copy at 70% for 2 5/8” tall
• PERSISTED – copy at 57% for 2.14” tall (just a hair bigger than 2 1/8”)

Measure your letters as you print them to make sure you maintain size, and adjust accordingly if they’re off. See Quilt Talk® p12 and 13 for printing and sizing tips.

Paper-piece away… I recommend looking at Quilt Talk® for the section on pre-cutting (p13) for letters as it will speed things up for you, and save you fabric.

How I paper- piece begins on p15 if you need a refresher. I like to peel the paper from my letters before I set them – if yours feel wobbly give them a spritz of starch or sizing.

Kerning/K-space (listed in descending order of size):

• SHE x 2: cut 4 @ 6 7/8” x 1 5/16”
• NEVER: cut 4 @ 4 1/4” x 1”
• THELESS: cut 6 @ 3 1/8” x 7/8”
• WAS WARNED: cut 5 @ 2 3/8” x 3 /4” and 1 @ 2 3/8” x 1 5/16” for between WAS and WARNED
• NOTE: There is no K-space between W and A in WAS or WARNED (this tucks the A next to the W more gracefully)
• PERSISTED: cut 8 @ 2 5/8” x 3/4”

Put the K-spaces between their letters, and give each word a hearty press, with steam as needed, to make it 17 1/2” long (including the seam allowances).

Cut 5 @ 1 1/2” x 17 1/2” to put between the rows of words. You could experiment with reducing the word space between NEVER and THELESS for more impact.

Border, quilt, and bind as desired. I recommend something simple on the quilting so as not to dilute the words. I find a simple cross hatch to usually be quite effective – I did a diagonal diamond cross-hatch on this one, one inch apart, basing the diagonal on the interior angle of the V in NEVER. If you choose to make a wallhanging remember that, because a wallhanging doesn’t get the wear of a quilt that gets cuddled a lot, you can afford to be simpler/less dense about your quilting.

This is for personal use only – please don’t sell what you make.

Please post yours on IG – and tag me @huntersds and #neverthelessquilt so I can see it!

The post Quilt Talk® Bonus Pattern – Nevertheless appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

So I’ve decided to start putting a few of them into fabric, and as I do, I’ll be blogging the pattern notes for them here… consider them free/bonus additions to my book, Quilt Talk®, just for you. Just to be clear, you’ll still need the book to access the letters, but I’ll have done a lot of the setting math for you

I started plotting the letters of this one while I was in the writing phase of the book two years ago (TWO YEARS! ARGH!), but life got busy, and it ended up in the UFO pile. I paper-pieced the letters sometime last year, and again, it stalled. A couple of weekends back, I got real, and got to setting the letters. And from there, the finish was an easy one!

I used the Barcelona line from Brigitte Heitland/Zen Chic – not only is she a talented designer, but she’s a lovely human as well! I used her highly successful Comma line for the Rackafrax quilt in the book.

This finished size for “Do No Harm” is 20” x 40” and this is how to do it:

• The construction is similar to “She Just Ignored People…” in the book (p 101)
• Copy the letters for do no, but, and no at 120% (“o” is 3”)
• Copy the letters for harm, take, and shit at 150% (“a” is 3.75”)
• Just to note, if you’re not keen on having a cuss word on your quilt, you can either play with the spelling by substituting an asterisk or exclamation mark for the “i”, or just change the word to a sentiment that suits you better.
• The K space for the letters is 1/2” finished. The Word space between do and not is 2” finished.
• The A&D strip for the 120% letters is 1.5” finished, and for the 150% letters is 2.375” (2 3/8”) finished
• The Leading is 1.5” finished, except under do not and no, where is is 1” finished.
• The top and bottom are 3” finished.
• The width is 20”. So to calculate the size of the strip on either side of the word, measure the word, subtract 0.5 to get the finished word size, then subtract that from 20, then divide the result in half (one for each side) then add 0.5 to each piece for seam allowance. As an example:
  • 8.5” word
  • minus 0.5 for seam allowance = 8
  • Subtract 8 from 20 = 12
  • Divide 12 in half = 6
  • Add 0.5 to each for seam allowance = 6.5” – so cut 2 pieces 6.5” x height of the word, and sew to either side of the word.

Quilting ideas:

• I find that a simple cross hatch, or straight lines works well with this kind of lettering, preferably done in a thread that doesn’t scream against any one fabric. I used medium gray Aurifil 2605 in this instance, with the cross hatch about 1” apart.
• You could also densely quilt down the background with pattern or stipple to allow the letters to stand up.

I hope you have fun making this one!

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