Directional Fabrics
 

Ah, the joys and despairs of directional fabrics. Some are rather easy to work with, others less so. I do have my own set of quilting rules and one of them is: No Dead Fish! If I use a directional fish fabric I have to make sure that there are no floaters -- you'd be surprised how often this rule has come up.

Depending on the project, there are many solutions. We can ignore the direction entirely! (unless it is fish fabric...) We can work with it, we can work against it.

If you have any comments to add or want to show pictures of your challenges and your design decisions, jump on in!

This is my current project and I'm going to take some time to think about it before I commit to layout. It is for my hubby's Aunt Debbie who is a fan of UM sports, I think for a college team color/themed quilt for a woman older than I am, I'm happy with what I've come up with. The hubby insisted on the team fabrics.

Originally, I cut the background fabric to be up/down directional, but now I'm thinking that this is square and not rectangular, the center star was deliberately chosen to be non-directional and maybe it would be better to radiate out from the center, or basically have all four sides be able to be "top".

I had to buy some extra of the background fabric, I think I have enough to cut (2) more pieces along the horizontal direction so that they are all alike, don't know if I have enough to cut the vertical which would be better...

This is just two shots of the same view, didn't change any of the fabric yet. Posting while I pull out the remainders of the background yardage to see what remains.

Beautiful quilt. I see you are a Michigan fan!
I always watch directions pretty closely even if it means changing out a fabric. I recently worked with some directionally fabrics that because of the block I was making made things sideways and that drove me crazy. They were for a collage themed block too. Then I do the best I could.

Aunt Debbie is going to be thrilled. Your work is beautiful. I don't see how any changes could improve it.

Turns out, I do have enough extra fabric if I choose to use it. This is sort of hard to really grasp from the angle of the picture (and it just looked warped turned that far around) but the idea is, no matter what side you have up top as you are looking down the center/background large floral Ms go the same way until the middle. Two of the sides would have the Ms going the same way, and two would be sort of sideways, but none would really be upside down...

edit: Hmmm, the things we see in pictures, maybe if I turn the two directional fabrics on the sides that are currently sideways...

Basically, should I go top to bottom directional on a square quilt (I would if it was a rectangle) or do I go all four sides... I'm thinking I have the extra fabric and change paths at this late stage!

I always buy extra of the directional fabric especially when doing HSTs.

I love the asymetrical design with the beautiful curves and straight sections. If it were mine, I would select a part of the design that i felt should be "up" and have all of the logos and ms going in the same direction. To me, your eye would flow with the design easier, but that is just my personal taste. No matter what you choose to do, most importantly, it is a beautiful quilt that happens to have team logos incorporated into it, not an overpowering collection of logos that have taken over the quilt. It is a creative work of art, and I am sure that Aunt Debbie will fall in love with it the moment she sees it.

It isn't actually asymmetrical, it's just my queen sized bed is my largest layout space, so you are basically seeing 1/4 of a queen sized quilt (plus the block wide background/sashing that puts the four quarters together). The difficulties of quilting in a small space. I seriously have no wall big enough, except one in the hallway that has horrible lighting and too narrow a space for any perspective. I don't have much space in front of my bed to take a picture either -- I pull out a little step ladder and climb up and still can't get the last foot or so.

I'm pretty happy with the layout and rearrangements I did. I did indeed decide to radiate out and recut the extra fabric -- don't know what else I'm ever going to do with it after this anyway -- I think the rest will be the binding. I moved the less directional sugar skull stars into the diagonal middle, makes them less in your sugar face... the center/sashing rows end on the license plates. The directional team fabrics were pretty much fussy cut down to the nubbins. I felt pretty confident in my ability to pick blue and yellow fabrics -- my husband wasn't so sure it would be understood to be UM without writing it in neon. I was so happy to have him participate in this project I went ahead with the team directional fabrics despite my reluctance.

Tuesday is my quilting group day and I have all the blocks laid out and numbered and will start pinning them together. The top as a whole will make more sense shortly.

It looks great to me.

Oh I love this! I can’t wait to see the blocks altogether in the whole quilt top! You never fail to surprise me with something different and unique. Love it and the colors.