How to Design a Quilt Pattern: EQ8 Design and Choosing Fabric

I love seeing sneak peeks and hearing the process of how other designers design their quilts… and I’m a quilt designer! I know what it takes! And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that… right? So I thought I’d share about my design process as I create the Origami quilt pattern.

The Design Process

The inspiration for quilt designs can come from an infinite amount of sources. For my Origami quilt, the inspiration started with a quilt for my mother-in-law and the fabrics she purchased in Japan for me to use.

The fabrics sat in a pile for quite a while, as I blankly stared at them for weeks, wondering what to do with them to help make the beautiful but busy prints work together. Until one dinner when my husband suggested that they looked a bit like origami paper and perhaps I could do something like that.

DING DING DING!

… Origami paper… with that little folded over corner like they use on packaging to show what prints are on the back of the paper… and I could use a Tsuru block or two to emphasise the origami-paper-ness of the design… And we were off! I found some Japanese paper images online that could stand in as representatives of the fabric, popped them into EQ8, used some coordinating prints for contrast, and we had a winner.

This is my first mock up in EQ8; the first iteration of Origami. The final quilt design for the pattern has changed slightly, especially to make the foundation paper pieced crane an optional block to use. But I loved the sketch, it was fun and inspiring, and thankfully mum loved it too, so it was full steam ahead.

I love how easy EQ8 makes it to design quilts and have a play with fabric placement and block design! If you’d love to use EQ8 to design your quilts, use the code EQ8ALYCE to get 20% off your order at Electric Quilt until December 31st, 2019. That includes the EQ8 software – bargain! And then check out my free EQ8 project file downloads to get you started in designing quilts.

The Fabric

So here’s the thing about designing quilt patterns – choosing fabric for your pattern sample is a big decision. It’s the colours and prints that are going to be selling your pattern, and you want to carefully consider what the fabrics you choose for the cover quilt. Are you wanting current, available fabrics that shops might possibly kit and/or that customers can replicate? Do you want to use solids so that the cover quilt doesn’t date as fast? What kinds of fabrics are “you” and your brand?

What this all boils down to for Origami, is that while I would be making a version for mum, her quilt would not be the pattern sample that I put on the cover of the pattern. I needed fabrics that were more modern and “me”, but that also worked well for a “show off prints” design like Origami. Beautiful, saturated colours in fun prints.

As I have previously worked with Art Gallery Fabrics and have long adored their use of colour and beautiful prints, I reached out and asked if they would be interested in collaborating for my Origami quilt pattern for the cover quilt. They said yes, and we went with their Selva range – it has those beautiful jewel tone saturated colours with pops of coral (hello!) and navy, and such super fun jungle prints to show off.

This is the design mock up that I sent, complete with Pure Solids Snow for the background, and the Junglen Jolly print for the binding. If you’re wanting to reach out to fabric manufacturers for similar collaboration opportunities, well, as the experts say, make it easy for them to say yes! Go above and beyond in what you send through so that it’s very clear what you’re hoping to achieve.

In the next post, I’ll share more about the next part – the pattern writing. Quilt maths, software, and writing, oh my! And then it’s on to making the quilt pattern sample.