I am blushing this moring with all these compliments about my skill at designing whole cloth quilts. I had always admired the tecnique and believed (and still do) that whole cloth represents the ultimate in a quiltmakers art and believed those who designed and ultimately quilted them were indeed touched by the "design angel". However I learned it was not difficult at all. While I had art clases in my earlier life, I had not felt successful in doing line drawing. I learned by copying another designers work. She was well known in the area of Northern Virginia for her original whole cloth designs. A fabric company contracted with her to reproduce her design in a preprinted on cloth format. The original were double bed size and I had to convert them to queen size. It was making circles true circles, adding feathers where the sections needed to be lengthened and feathers all consistent in size. I was drawing one day and said to myself "I have done this before but sure don't believe in reincarnation" and then it hit me.......the same motions being used in drawing feathers were the same I had been taught many many years ago in elementary school penmanship. After that realization I was away to go. The second discovery was that the secret to drawing a perfect heart or tulip is when both sides match and the best source might be a simple paper snowflake we all cut as kids. The final was to start looking around us - there are design inspirations everywhere. Using graft paper and work only on small sections and repeat those for a full design. After all an elaborate feather border on a quilt may be only 12" repeated. I believe the ability is already in us.....always has been but somewhere along the way we either forgot it or lost it usualy because someone said "you can't do it". So quilters - just try.

Holice, you make it sound so easy. I have one half of a wholecloth drawn on paper and the fabric on a shelf in my sewing room. I have a quilt to finish before I actually start transferring the design to fabric. Hopefully, I'll get to it sometime this summer. I used two Roberta Benvin stencils so I haven't actually designed it myself. I fell in love with wholecloths the moment I opened Barbara Chainey's, "Essential Quilter." Then I started researching Durham and Welsh quilting and became even more enamored with wholecloths. I would love to travel to Yorkshire and take one of Lillian Hedley's classes, but I suspect that will never happen. My design is for a 98 x 108 to fit my king size bed as a comforter -- that is if I ever get it finished -- I will hand quilt it. I have a lot of UFO's, but have decided that I want to do this even if the UFO's never get finished.

Yes, but the patchwork helps hide my very very less than perfect quilting!

Have you checked out Christian Lane Quilters on the internet thats where I got mine. It was a queen I got for 60.00. They have wallhangings, etc. Check it out and they are quick on sending it through the mail. I am getting me another one-I had so much fun and it was so soft after I washed it-all the blue lines disappeared.So proud of it.

wandatn: which design did you get from Christian Lane?

One of these days---------I'm going to have someone draw the Assateague lighthouse and oil houses on a piece of good fabric. Probably won't be great big and I'll finish it out with borders.

If you check out www.mandldesigns.com, they have a lot of patterns for whole cloth quilting. Just go to their tab that says whole cloth quilts. They will also trace the pattern for you if you want them to. They have a lot of cute designs. I use tricot (slip fabric) for some of my whole cloth quilts and they are really pretty and they are hand quilted.