CHOOSING YOUR PATTERN
SIZING PATTERNS
ENLARGING A PATTERN
REDUCING A PATTERN
ALTERING PATTERNS
MAKING YOUR OWN PATTERNS
MULTI COLOR PATTERNS - JOINER STRIPS
ADDING APPLIQUÉ BORDERS

If you are just beginning, choose a simple, one color appliqué design like one of the ones in the free pattern section on this website. This will start you learning and perfecting your appliqué and quilting techniques. You may want to do several smaller pillow size projects, even some of the multicolor ones, before embarking on a larger size wall hanging.

Work up to doing a wall hanging and eventually a bed quilt. You probably won't want a larger project to show your skills in progress. With practice you will become comfortable with your appliqué and quilting rhythms.

After the first few projects you may find a pattern that, at a smaller size, looks a little too difficult for your current skills. You can always simply enlarge it to fit your quilting comfort zone.

Sometimes you will find a pattern you love but it isn't the size you want your finished project to be. Sometimes it's a design that looks too complicated for your appliqué experience. No problem. Most patterns can be enlarged or reduced.

However, enlarging or reducing a pattern does not make it yours. You should always give credit to the designer of the pattern - even if your add borders, or embellish it (both of which YOU can take the credit for).

Enlarging a pattern is easier than reducing one. The only thing you have to think about is how much you can enlarge a pattern and still have it look good. You probably wouldn't want to take a simple pillow or small wall hanging design and enlarge it to bed size. It could be pretty bold and boring.

A good rule of thumb is to enlarge patterns no more than twice their size. Therefore, a pillow size 14" square appliqué would size up to a 28" square appliqué. Of course, with the background fabric and perhaps a couple of borders you could end up with a 40" project.

In the case of miniature designs, such as the ones in Menehune Quilts...the Hawaiian Way , you could enlarge any of them to a bed size quilt as the miniature size patterns (21" square appliqué) were actually reduced from full size quilts.

When you are attempting to enlarge a miniature pattern to a bed quilt size, you should do it in increments, retracing each time. After determining the size of your finished appliqué decide whether you need two or three enlargements.

Take the original size design to a photo copy shop and double the size on multiple sheets of the largest size paper they offer. Or take the design to a blue print shop (ask for a black print as it will last longer) and tell them the finished length of the measurement of the straight side of the 1/8th pattern. They will do the calculations for you.

While it may be tempting to ask for the final measurement for a full bed size appliqué (and with some patterns that may work) your pattern will be more exact if you do it in increments. Retrace the pattern after each enlargement making sure that the 1/8th pattern is just that and hasn't been distorted in the enlargement process.

If the pattern has been drawn using a fat line, then that line will become fatter and fuzzier in the enlargement process. When retracing, you will need to consistently trace either the inner or outer edge of the fat line.

A thin line may become hard to see or disappear altogether. If you do the enlargement in increments then you can retrace and make any little adjustments along the way. Especially ensuring that your 1/8th pattern is a true 1/8th. You can use a protractor or a 45 degree triangle to check to make sure. If the measurement isn't true at the finished size, you will have a big problem when you go to cut the design out.

When you trace your final copy you will have to decide whether to add your turn under allowance to the final pattern or to trace the pattern on the fabric and add the allowance when cutting.

An easy way to add the cutting allowance to the pattern or fabric is to tie two pencils together with rubber bands. One pencil will trace on the pattern line and the other will add your turn under allowance of about 1/4".

Take your large pattern to a blue print shop and tell them the finished measurement of the straight of the 1/8th pattern. Depending on the amount of the reduction, do the reduction in stages.

Again, while it may be tempting to do it all at once, not only may your line disappear (it is was thin to begin with) but not all patterns can be reduced successfully. The turn-under allowance (minimum 1/8th inch) remains the same no matter the size of the appliqué design. When you reduce a pattern, where the distance between adjoining parts of the pattern has already been calculated for the minimum turn under allowance (1/8th on one side, 1/8th on the other or 1/4" between the two ), you also reduce the space you can use for your  turn under allowance.

This gives you two choices. Either distort the design by still turning under the minimum allowance or alter the design to allow for the minimum turn under allowance. This is why when reducing a pattern, you must first determine if the final size you want is actually doable. You can determine this by measuring the closest space between adjoining appliqué parts. If the original space is half an inch and you are going to reduce the design by half (making that space 1/4") then you will have enough fabric to allow for a 1/8" turn under allowance on each side - and even that is iffy.  Try to reduce the design further and you will have to rework the design to accommodate enough fabric to turn under. This doesn't always work.

If you determine that you can reduce the pattern to your desired size, reduce it in increments, making the adjustments to the turn under allowance, if necessary, with each reduction.

You've probably heard that altering a design more than 5% makes it yours. Wrong. The test is if the design can no longer be distinguished from the original. Some quilters trying to create their "own" designs will take flowers from one existing design and use them with leaves from another.  That will probably work, but is it really your own creative design?

Of course, all designers find this, to say the least, distasteful and annoying. They all know what they've designed, even if it shows up in bits and pieces in a design remix.

It always amazes me why those who want designs they can claim they've created - don't do just that. Create their own. Yes, it may take a little more work, but the end result will be such great satisfaction and pride in knowing that it is truly your design. Once you've achieved that, you'll also be annoyed, to say the least, when someone else takes your innovative masterpiece in whole or part and calls it their own.

And truly, designing your own patterns is not rocket science. Granted there are different styles of designing and some designers are better at it than others - but anyone can design a simple pattern. The more you dabble the better you'll get. I cut my first design out of a folded 6" square of folded paper with fingernail scissors. Yes, I ruined the scissors...but I thought the design was wonderful (looking back, it really wasn't) and it spurred me on - just as it will you - to do more and more designs (but, using bigger pieces of paper and regular scissors) until I felt ready to share the designs with others. So try it, you'll love it.

It seems such a mystery. Actually, it's lots of fun. Start by finding a leaf you like or a photograph of a simple flower you like. Dover Books has a lot of copyright free, line drawings of flowers that would be good also. If you have a talent for art, or even if you don't, draw your own.

If you're planning to use a flower, consider also adding it's leaf and bud and fruit, if any. Many of the early Hawaiian quilts (and quilts today) are a study in botany. Draw and cut out each part in proportion to each other, as well as, in proportion to the size project you are making. Test the size on a folded eighth of paper. Do you have enough room - too much room. Are your pieces spaced so that you have enough turn under allowance.

I remember interviewing, Aunty Debbie Kakalia - one of Hawaii's living treasures - for Hawaiian Designin' Quarterly . As we discussed design, she showed me her shoe boxes full of little envelopes. Each held a different flower and it's parts.  Aunty Debbie would use those stencils, cut from file folders, as I remember, to design her many one-of-a-kind designs for those that ordered quilts and kits. She would lay the flower parts out, on her folded fabric, in a pattern she had dreamed the night before and then connect them with the appropriate size stems and branches. She drew right on the folded fabric - never making a paper pattern - so each quilt was unique.

Some years later when I started designing my own patterns, I know that her shared technique greatly influenced my work. Unlike many quilt designers of her era, she freely shared her knowledge and was one of Hawaii's great designers and quilters.

So make up your own shoe boxes of your favorite flowers and get designing. There is nothing more exciting than opening up your folded square of paper to find a Hawaiian quilt masterpiece in the making.

So how in the heck do you make a multicolor design? Actually it's simple. The secret is "joiner strips". You'll see them used in all of my pattern books that offer multicolor designs.

When you are making a pattern for a flower and leaf design. Draw the entire 1/8th of the design. Then trace the leaf portion (most likely the leaf portion will not need joiner strips as it is connected in the center.

For the flowers, which will be a separate color, trace them onto a separate piece of paper within the 1/8th of a pattern. It is best to draw the straight and the diagonal lines to mark the 1/8th pattern limits.
The use connector strips - perhaps 1/2" wide - from the edge of the flower to the straight and/or diagonal lines of the 1/8th pattern. If part of your flower is on the straight or diagonal (making it half of a flower on the pattern piece) then you will only need one joiner strip.

You will cut out the joiner strips just as if they are parts of the pattern when cutting out the paper pattern and when you cut out the flower part of the pattern on your folded fabric. This way when you open up the cut fabric the joiner strips will keep the flowers in place in relation to the pattern. You can place them in the correct position on the background fabric and then pin and baste and them.  Cut the joiner strips off before appliquéing.

Now, there is one more thing to consider when designing a multicolor pattern. Take the flower and leaf pattern example above. Usually the flower petals will overlap the stem. Therefore, because you are using separate colors, you will have to add a little more to the end of the stem pattern so that it will lay under the flower. While the end of of the stem won't be appliquéd it must be long enough so that when the flower is appliquéd over it the stem lays under the appliquéd flower edge so there isn't a gap between the two parts. Therefore, you might want to add 1/4" or 1/2" to the end of the stem part - but not too much because you don't want to see the stem prominently under the flower.

If you are doing stamens, say for a Hibiscus design, you may want to hand place them to save fabric as they are small pieces. But you should still cut them out from fabric that is folded into eighths - to accommodate the size of the stamen pattern.

If you want to add a border that will be appliquéd onto your background fabric, you will have to take the width of that border into consideration, plus an additional 1/2" seam allowance, when you are calculating your background fabric size.

Also, plan your border so that it is in proportion to your center design.
Too wide, too close - it overwhelms the design. Too narrow, too far away - it might as well not be there. So get out your graph paper and plot your project, determine what looks best to you, then design your border accordingly.  

If you are making a coverlet style quilt which hangs down just over the bottom mattress, and you are handy with a sewing machine, you might want to make a tailored dust ruffle to match and appliqué your border on that. The coverlet would then only show the center medallion.

Many Hawaiian quilts have a simple border running from the outside edges of the quilt inward to a scallop design. You can make the border whatever width that will compliment the quilt design in the middle. Determine the width of your border, calculate the inner measurement and then adjust, as necessary so that your scallops are of equal length along the four inner borders.

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