Football Season

I thought I'd share how I made some templates for an upcoming quilt project...

I'm starting a pickle dish quilt based on the design in Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Romance. My first step was to carefully cut the pattern pages from the book so I could lay them flat on a scanner bed.

I scanned the pages and printed the shapes I wanted to use for templates (pieces B and C), being careful to keep the sizes unchanged.  I cut the shapes out roughly, leaving a margin around the edge, then I used basting spray to temporarily affix them to the underside of a piece of template plastic.

I traced the markings I wanted to keep onto the template plastic using a fine-tipped permanent marker.  I didn't really need the seam lines except for the straight edges of the background piece -- I plan to cut those on a fold.  For the alignment marks, I used a drill press to make holes in the plastic at the given locations.  I found that a 5/64" hole works well to allow a Frixion marker to draw an alignment dot on the fabric.

I used a utility knife and an old cutting board to trim the template shapes along the cutting lines.  This template plastic is too thin to use as a cutting guide with a rotary cutter, so I traced around the shapes on the back side of my fabric then cut them out "freehand."  I stacked several fabrics to cut at once, which was a little frustrating with a rotary cutter and no ruler.  I found it easier to pin the fabrics together (after a rough straight cut to separate each piece) and cut with scissors.

For the underlying fabrics, I aligned the template on the cut pieces to transfer the alignment marks.

I also scanned the fan shape to print on foundation paper.  I was able to just fit two shapes on legal size paper:

I expect this to be a long-term project.  I'm still collecting fabrics for this, and have yet to decide on background fabric.  That might be a subject for a future post.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

And by the way... War Eagle!