Alison Glass Ex Libris Strip Pieced Quilt :: Design Inspiration

The team behind the scenes at the Sewing Quarter really chose well and gave me a super treat when they presented me with the Alison Glass Ex Libris panel and a selection of prints from the Sun Print range.

I was over the moon!

I was briefed to come up with a design but to keep it simple, so that’s exactly what I did! Sounds easy but, as my husband will tell you, I went through so many different options and spent a fair amount of time trying to decide which option to go with. This is why I thought I would pull together some artwork of a few of the options to share with you.

Most of the examples below use just one 2 1/2″ strip from 12 prints from the Sun Print collection and result in a quilt that measures approximately 46″ x 48″.

Decide on what order you would like all of your bright colours to be in and take note or take a picture with your phone.

Cut all of your strips and sew them together in pairs and then sew the pairs together in pairs and repeat until they are all sewn together into one large piece.

You can then sub-cut the strips into smaller sections. The first two design suggestions below use four  9 3/4″ sections (joined into two columns) and the third design option uses two 10″ sections, joined to make one column).

This is the version that I demonstrated on the show. I kept the panel whole and added 9 3/4″ wide strips on each side.

The panel can cut in half and alternated with two columns of 9 3/4″ strips

The panel cut in half with strips sub cut to just 20″ wide sewn in the middle.

This next version of the quilt is an extension of the version that I demonstrated. It uses TWO 2 1/2″ strips from each of the twelve brights. The strips are added together in the same way and sub-cut in the same way. Once the columns are added either side of the panel you can add one strip across the top and one across the bottom. This will create a quilt that is approximately 46″ wide x 68″ high

If you are feeling a little more brave you can cut up your panel a even more. I really love the idea of having a block of four circles in the middle of the quilt and the remaining four used as corner blocks. I think it looks really stunning.

As I mentioned in my demonstration, you will need to be careful with your quilt maths as the spacing between the circles is not the same horizontally as it is vertically. You may consider cutting the central four down into pairs and removing a little of the spacing that runs horizontally so that you can get this area square.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the space around the circles is quite slight which will mean if you treat them as individual circles some the ‘white space’ will disappear into seam allowances when you construct the quilt.

When it comes to making a quilt I hope this has given you some food for thought as to how you can keep things simple, whilst maximising impact!

If you’re not a quilter, then the ex libris panel is wonderful to use in bag making. You can really hero the beautiful circles on the flap of a bag. It would look amazing!

You can catch up with the show where I demonstrated how I used the Ex Libris panel on YouTube.

I also have a playlist where I keep track of all of the shows that I appear on. Generally speaking I am on the second and fourth hour!