How to Make a Watercolor Quilt
Watercolor quilts can be beautiful works of art. Like a painting, they take advantage of shading, slowly moving from dark to light tones. Follow these steps to make a watercolor quilt.
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Things You'll Need
- Watercolor fabrics
- Watercolor grid
- Rotary cutter
- Ruler
- Mat
- Iron
- Quilting thread
- Regular thread
- Batting
- Quilting pins
- Quilting pencil
Instructions
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Select your fabrics. This is the most important part of making a watercolor quilt. You'll want to find some dark fabrics, some medium fabrics (known as "bridging fabrics") and some light fabrics, also known as "smoothies." Look for multicolored fabrics with medium to large-scale prints and graceful curving lines. Most of your fabrics should be in the medium range. For a 16-patch quilt, you will need 16 different fabrics. However, if you find fabric that looks different when it is cut into 2 inch squares, you won't need as many different fabrics.
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Wash and dry your fabric and iron them.
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3
Cut your fabric into squares. You can use a grid for designing a watercolor quilt. Some are printed on a fusible webbing, and they allow you to arrange your squares on a wall before sewing.
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Sew your blocks together once you have achieved the proper shading. Use 1/4-inch seam allowances.
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Iron your seams and add a border to the area around your blocks. Layer the three pieces--your quilt top, batting and backing--together, with the quilt top and backing facing out. You can hold the 3 pieces together with quilting pins or by sewing large stitches that can be easily removed. Using quilting thread, sew small stitches around the seam lines. Then, enclose the three layers and sew binding around the edges of your quilt.
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