For a friend, I was asked to make a quilt inspired by these gorgeous wall decals from blik. The pattern for these wall tiles, called “Conquered” is based on a Threadless pattern by Ross Zietz. Mr. Zietz was extremely generous – I reached out to him on flickr to get his blessing to make this one quilt and for permission to blog about it, and he was kind enough not only to encourage my endeavors, but he also sent me his design documents!
This made it so much easier to formulate my plan for “conquering” this project.
I photoshopped guide-lines on the tile until I had pieces that were nice rectangles that would be paper-piecing friendly.
Okay so then I printed out that guide and went to the floor with a giant piece of paper (wrapping paper taped together to be roughly 60″ square) and I translated my guide with pencil onto the paper by scaling, just like you used to do in grade school. Something roughly like one inch squared on my guide was equal to 7 inches square on my giganto paper. I fudged things here with layout and color from the original design in order to work best for me.
Then I cut out each rectangle and those were my paper piecing pieces (although I had to be conscious about adding seam allowance when I was actually cutting out fabric and the resulting “blocks”). From then on it was just assemble blocks and get a quilt top.
Then I used my sew and turn appliqué technique to make the snowy mountain tops, and top stitched those onto the quilt-top.
Cloudy quilt lines.
Cloud fabric and stripped pieced backing.
Skinny purple binding.
Lovely quilt. Thanks, Ross!
jenna brand 
Super cool! Thanks for blogging the process, I love seeing how quilters make the picture in their head in fabric! Also, the quilting and the pop of purple binding are just wonderful.
Thanks for the note, Kali! I always love trying and learning new tricks.
You’re awesome. I love the huge paper piecing idea. How was the wrapping paper to sew on?
So I actually traced my wrapping paper pieces onto computer paper so that I could reuse my giant pattern. Computer paper is easy to sew on, although I find it best to squirt some water on it when preparing to tear the paper off of my fabric.
Great idea to use those huge paper pieces! I bet the recipients are thrilled 🙂
Thanks, Debbie!
Purple Mountain Majesty!!
Woot!!
I love this! It is beautiful!
Thanks, Anya!
Your quilt is amazing, thanks for sharing how you made it, that was fun to learn!
Awesome! I’m so happy you liked the post. It’s a fun technique.
I love your quilts! How do you get them to “crinkle” like they do? Would you share with us the type of batting you use, please?
Hey Peggy! Thanks for the comment! The crinkle just comes naturally with washing! If you use a more dense quilting pattern (quilting lines close together) that can add an extra crinkle boost. I use a normal, relatively thin cotton batting- quilters dream is a nice brand that I can easily get from my local Joann’s! Put your finished quilt in a normal wash cycle and enjoy the crinkly coziness!
I love this quilt, and would like to try it, but I don’t understand how you get all the angles into each piece. I’m a newbie at this but I want to learn!
This is a spectacular quilt and pattern. I am impressed with how you designed it from beginning to end. Thank you for sharing this. Are you open to selling your pattern and directions by chance?