How to Paper Quilt on the Grid

 

Featuring the Graphic Shapes 2 Dies
Also used in this layout: the Mid-Century and Triple Diamond Border Dies, the Corner Tile Die and Grid Cut 2.125”squares

I love Quilts and I really like creating paper quilts, especially on grid paper, they can be work but not nearly the work of a fabric creation! I’m going to be using several dies, including our featured Graphic Shapes 2 Die to show you how to do a little paper quilting on the grid. You can make it simple or more complicated; it’s all up to you.

This Tell Your Story shares a bit of that love of quilts with a fascinating new road trip opportunity. The concept of Quilt Barns Squares began in Adams County, Ohio and has blossomed across the states and even into Canada! People are getting involved in painting 4’x4’ quilt squares and mounting them on barns while others enjoy driving ‘the trail’ to see and shoot the squares. This shows a few I found in Ashtabula County last fall while out on a road trip.

Tell Your Story…here’s mine…

 

I’ve added a few of the left over triangles doubled up as photo corners to frame the journaling.

This summer we’ve introduced three new shades of blue to our grid papers, Blueberry, Sky Blue and Pale Blue. We’ve already seen the first two and today I’m featuring Pale Blue.

 

As I considered what I wanted to do with the areas in my patterns I’d place my Graphic Shapes I needed to decide on a color for the shapes and how I would fill them. I also decided to change the pattern #113 by taking the two strips of 1” squares and turn them into 1×4 and 1×5 strips to match the two 1×4 strips of Pattern #189. I decided on black accents because it reminded me of many of the traditional Amish quilts.

We live on the edge of the largest Ohio Amish community and have seen up close the wonderful handiwork and skill in the Amish quilts. You may see the Amish as Plain Folk, but they do love their colors in their quilts. The bold solid colors pop when black is used as contrast. It’s been a while since I’ve done an inspiration board and I thought this would be a good time to share mine for this layout.

 

Each page has one of the dies from the Graphic Shapes 2 on it. One page has an additional two 4- 1”square block sections that I’ve used the corner tile dies to create another quilt pattern Flying Geese that happens to be on the Quilt Block on the covered bridge in the photo below.

The Graphic Shape for this page makes a very nice pinwheel quilt pattern. I had the spots all filled with color, but then tried it with just one color and black and liked the dramatic look as it lined up next to the flying geese squares.

 

On the next page I was going for an argyle look with light, medium and dark colors for a repeating color pattern. Cutting multiple die pieces in each of the colors makes embedding easy. Saving all the extras will help make using this die shape in another project or even a card easy. Just bag them up!

 

Now for the additional ‘quilting’ details I’ve included. In each of the strip sections on the pages I’ve used black with black strip die sections in the Triple Diamond and Mid-Century borders. I think the dark color helps to balance the pages. I’ve laid them tone on tone for a textural detail.

Quilts are easily noticed for their lovely patterns and colors, but there are more details when you see them up close. You will see sashing and borders in addition to the squares intricately stitched. Adding stitching details weren’t possible, but this technique detail does nicely instead.

I did a bit of experimenting with colors but it really seemed to be adding too much color and confusion to the page, taking away from the photos. And it’s the photos that this is all about. To give you an idea of what you can do with a little color and these border dies, here’s what I played around with.

 

Have you Told Your Story about a hobby or pastime you enjoy? Do you have an activity that takes you on trips around your state or across the country? Pick a pattern and a die or two and your photos and get started. These graphic dies are so versatile you’ll love finding how many ways you can use them on your pages.

Andrea Fisher