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A Quilter's Alphabet

A Quilter’s Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More

November 4, 2020November 3, 2020 Post a comment

Hi friends!

Today in our series, A Quilter’s Alphabet, Tammy and I are exploring the letter D. I have 3 terms for you today: Quilt Design wall, dog ears and Drunkard’s path block. Let’s get right into the terms!

Be sure to read to the end to check out my sale and current surprise!

Quilt Design Wall

A quilt design wall is a vertical surface where you can layout your your pieces to be made into blocks, your blocks to be made into quilts to see how they look together. A design wall can be something you have fixed on your wall, it can be something you pull out when needed. 

You can make a a light, inexpensive quilt design wall made of foam insulation covered with cotton batting! I talked about quilt design walls in this post.

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

There is also something called design boards. What are these? They are portable boards that one can use to set up a block for piecing and then bring over to the table where you sewing machine is.

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

They are super helpful for keeping pieces where they are supposed to be! And if you return the sewn units to the board, they make it easy to transport- back to the cutting table for trimming, or to the ironing surface for pressing, or to the design wall for placement!

I talked about how to make portable design boards in this post– super easy using foam core boards, cotton batting and duck tape!

Dog Ears

What a silly name! Dog ears are the long points that extend past a seam allowance after pieces are stitched together. A great example is when making half square triangle units, or any unit where you are sewing triangles together- because when you are sewing triangles together, there will be excess bits at the corners in the seam allowance.

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

Trim these little bits away to reduce bulk and make your next step in piecing the block easier.

Drunkards’s Path Block

This block has curves! The basic block is a quarter circle in a square. 

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

One side of the block has a concave curve and the other convex- want to know which is which? I explained that in this post!

Of course, the block can look different depending on how much of the square is showing! 

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

The finished quilt can look different depending on how the blocks are placed. This is my quilt that was in the 2019 Quilter’s Planner- Drinking in the Sunshine. I used a drunkard’s path block with other pieced blocks. 

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.
Drinking in the Sunshine quilt on the beach. Photo by Kitty Wilkin of @nightquilter

New pattern with an alternate setting is coming soon! And a new template as well!

Don’t forget to check out the quilting terms starting with the letter D that Tammy is explaining for you!

Next week in the Exploring the Basics series, Tammy and I will be discussing the Square in a Square technique!

happy quilting!

Kate

Like this post? Be sure to Pin It!

A Quilter's Alphabet- D is for (Quilt) Design Wall and More featured by top US Quilting blog and shop, Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

SALE!!!!

The post office has announced a temporary price increase – each 1st class package goes up $0.25 and priority mail goes up $0.40 from 10/18/20 to 12/27/20.

So here’s a sale – Buy One Item and Get 20% Off Another item (good on up to two items per order- lower price is discounted).

Plus, there are more PDF patterns coming.

AND…

November and Thanksgiving is a time of year to celebrate those things and people we are grateful to have in our lives. As a THANK YOU to my customers, any orders placed during the month of November will include a bonus goodie. It might be an extra pattern, it might be a FQ… you just don’t know what it might be!!!

Thank you to all my readers and customers for following along!

Design boardDesign Wall
About Kate

About Kate

Hi! I'm Kate Colleran, a designer who creates quilt patterns, fabric and surface designs. I lecture and teach about quilting. Welcome to my online home!

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