Monday, October 03, 2011

Drunkard's Path Fabric Requirements


We know that folks may need a few weeks to decide what fabric they want to use for the quilt-along and get it shipped to them if they are ordering it online, so we wanted to make sure you had the fabric requirements for the quilt far enough in advance.  And check it out, we started a Drunkard's Path QAL Flickr group so that we can all get to know each other and you guys can share pics of your fabric selections and progress as we get going!

Yellow and Orange Fabrics for Drunkard's Path
Haven't picked my fabric for this QAL yet so this is from my earlier quilt!

As I mentioned in my block tutorial, the templates that I made use 5" fabric squares, so if you have charm squares, now is a great time to use them!  You can also cut your own 5" squares to use from a layer cake of 10" squares (makes 4 charm squares per layer cake piece), from fat quarters (makes 12 charm squares), or from yardage (56 charm squares in a yard of fabric).  Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson! has a tutorial for cutting charm squares from yardage that you may find helpful.

Drunkards Path Quilt Top
Speaking of my earlier quilt top...

The drunkard's path quilt design is made up of larger blocks made up of 16 of the smaller blocks; using my block tutorial, each of these larger blocks will measure 15" square.  For each larger square you will need a total of 16 charm squares, 8 of the patterned/colored fabrics and 8 of your contrasting solid (off-white in my quilt top above).  For my central park quilt, I used nine of the larger blocks to make a 45" square quilt, which you can think of as either a large baby quilt or a small lap quilt.  For a smaller baby quilt, you could make just four blocks, making a 30" square quilt - which you could also add borders to and make it a bit bigger if you wanted.  I'll provide the fabric requirements for both of these sizes, but if you wanted to make a larger quilt, you should be able to figure out how much fabric you need pretty easily!

Drunkard's Path Blocks - Circles blocks


The one tricky part of this is that the amount of fabric you will need depends a bit on the design that you are planning to use... Kristie and I will both be posting more about the different design options with this quilt next week (and Kristie had some more awesome inspiration pics up in her fabric requirements post today), and you can check out my earlier post (with lots more drawings like the one above).  Cutting both pattern pieces out of a single charm square, like I have you do in my tutorial, will only work out right if you are going to use both the inner and outer curve piece from that charm, like you would in the pink/red designs above.  If you are planning to do a design like in the yellow/green designs above where your patterned/colored pieces are all inner or all outer curves, you will need more fabric and the cutting will be a bit more involved.

Here are the fabric requirements for a basic quilt design where you'll be using both the inner and outer curves from each charm square (see the paragraph above for the number of charms you can get from different fabric cuts if you are cutting your own):

Small baby quilt - 30" square
For the quilt top: 32 pattern/colored charms, 32 contrasting solid charms
For the quilt back - 1 yard fabric
For the binding (using 2.5" wide strips cut on the grain): 3/8 yard (or you may be able to get by with just 1/4 yard, but it could be close)

Larger baby quilt/lap quilt - 45" square
For the quilt top: 72 pattern/colored charms, 72 contrasting solid charms [Thanks to Katie for pointing out the error in this originally - sorry about that!!]
For the quilt back: 3 yards (or 1.5 yards if you add a 3-4" pieced strip to make it wide enough)
For the binding (using 2.5" wide strips cut on the grain): 3/8 yard

Let me know if you have any questions!  And don't forget to go check out and join the Flickr group :)


{This post is part of the Drunkard's Path Quilt-Along that I am hosting with Kristie from OCD.  Check out my Drunkard's Path QAL page for the schedule and links to the posts so far, and feel free to join in any time!}

10 comments:

  1. Thank you!!!I´ll go choose my fabrics.

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  2. Hi! Your earlier quilt is so beautiful! I just lover those soft autumn colours and and the drunkard's path is great!

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  3. 56 fat quarters in a yard of fabric? I wish! LOL. Can't wait to get started on this :D

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  4. @krista - OOPS, thanks for pointing out that typo! I fixed it :)

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  5. For the larger one, isn't it 72 charms?

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  6. I hit post too quickly. I'm going to hunt down some fabric from my stash for this one. I have a few too many charm packs that are just waiting for a project.

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  7. Katie - you are totally right, thanks for pointing that out. Sorry everyone, I normally am not this spacy :/

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  8. I'm totally late on this one but I couldn't afford the fabric until I got my birthday money! Anyway, bought it today, just finished drying it and wondering how many 5" charm squares I would need for a queen sized quilt or a twin quilt? I'm debating between the two.

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  9. Emily - I haven't done those calculations, but you should be able to do the math for whatever size you want to make based on the info above (16 charms - 8 pattern and 8 solid/contrast- makes a 15" square). Hope that helps and good luck with your quilt!

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