Quilt Design

This week you will be designing a quilt—you will not be required to actually make a quilt and you do not need to know how to sew or even be willing to touch fabric.

You will be designing a patch work quilt. A patch work quilt is one involves small pieces of fabric in different shapes being sewn together to create different designs.

The pictures shown above give some very simple examples of portions of a quilt called a 'block.' A block of a quilt is usually a square but can be a rectangle or a triangle or even a hexagon.

Since I usually make blocks that are squares or rectangles, I usually design my quilts on graph paper. You need to make sure that the squares on the paper are big enough to see so don’t try this with less than ¼ inch graph paper.

If you are at home and need some graph paper click on the link below.

On your graph paper you will need to experiment with different shapes and arrangements. I recommend that you use pencil so you can erase.

When you have a design that you like, you will need to draw a final good copy. This one you will color.

KEEP YOUR DESIGN RELATIVELY SIMPLE—it will get too complicated for you to deal with the shapes otherwise.

Please note--I will be looking at all of the shapes that you use in your design. All of the shapes that you use should be CONVEX. This includes anything that you might consider to be background. (Some people have had a little trouble with this detail in past classes.)

Experiment with colors—

What does your quilt look like colored with only 2 colors? What does your quilt look like in 3 colors? Remember that my examples in class looked very different based on the number of colors that I used.

Is there a better way to color it—more than 3 colors?

1. at least 4 distinctly different shapes (example: 2 different size right triangles will count as 2 different shapes.)
2. all shapes should be CONVEX (This includes anything that you think of as "background.")
3. at least one of the shapes should be a quadrilateral of some sort
4. symmetry—remember that there are 2 different kinds (lines of symmetry and rotational symmetry)
   • line of symmetry has two halves that or mirror images--show me where the mirror would be
   • rotational symmetry where the design appears the same after it has been rotates a certain number of degrees (such as 90^o or 180^o)

• a copy of your QUILT DESIGN uncolored (20 points)
• a list of the shapes that you used and they are convex (10 points)
• a description of the symmetry—use sketches to show lines of symmetry or state the degree of rotational symmetry (10 points)
• your quilt colored in 2 colors (5 points)
• your quilt colored in 3 colors (5 points)
• extra credit for coloring the quilt again using a different number of colors