A tutorial to celebrate the fact that I am not dead, while mourning the fact that, maybe, democracy is.

It's been two years, and I am still alive, despite having just been stung by a jellyfish not 2 hours ago. Oh well, that's not what I'm here about.

Among other things, I've been making a lot of custom t-shirts, and I'm here today to give the instructions, as well as some terrible photos because I can't afford a new phone and also it's 2017 and I can't just go buy a camera, it's not 2004 any more, Dick Smith stores don't even exist anymore. So hopefully the words make sense.

My demo shirt for this tutorial is one that says "Nevertheless, she persisted" because the joy of this project is the lack of wait time - some fucker insults a feminist icon and it's reclaimed and on shirts by the end of the working week.

Custom foil slogan t-shirt

As always, maybe try this stuff on a scrap of fabric first to get the gist of things. Ironing is more art than science, so yours may take more or less of it to get everything to stick right.

Materials and Tools

• Plain cotton or cotton-blend t-shirt or singlet (some stretch is fine, but avoid anything too drapey. I like the $3 ones from kmart)
• Iron-on adhesive (I use Heat n Bond lite, but they all work pretty much the same)
• Transfer foil (Jones Tones if you can still get any, Minc if you can afford it, or, like I do, use nail transfer foil. You can get 50 packs of mixed designs for a couple of dollars on ebay, or rolls of fancy designs for about a dollar each that will make a few shirts. Keep in mind though that the heat and stretching will cause the holographic sparkle to largely vanish, so go for cool designs in the colour, not the sparkle)
• Non-stick baking paper
• An iron and a surface to use it on
• Pen or pencil
• Sharp scissors and/or a craft knife and cutting mat
• Computer for coming up with a design, or just a pen and paper if you want to freehand something.

Come up with a design

This tutorial is for a simple text design with only one or a couple of colours, but you can also get fancy and do a multi-coloured design in layers similar to screen-printing. That said, for a simple shirt, I have these tips:

• avoid any really really narrow parts to your design; remember, you need to cut the design out. More words means more cutting, and smaller words means trickier cutting.
• using a cursive design means you don’t need to worry about laying out multiple bits with correct spacing, or the step where you carefully tack down the main parts so you can trim out bridging bits.
• that said, some cursive fonts can be harder to read; make sure that your word doesn’t look like something else at a glance. 

I usually play around with a whole heap of fonts till I find one you like the look of, and alter it as necessary – move the letters about till you like the look of it, vary the cases between upper and lower, and add or remove flourishes at the beginning and end of the word. Scale the design to the size you want – I aim for about 20cm long, but my shirts are fairly small. Nip to nip will lower the risk of unreadability.

Trace the design onto the paper backing of the interfacing

This is especially easy if you are doing so straight from the screen of your laptop, as it works like a tracing lightbox. However, the Heat n Bond I use has a similar opacity to notepad paper, so you can usually manage to trace it straight from white paper too.

Cut out the design

If there are any spaces in your design, you can leave little bridging bars between the letters to be cut out when you start affixing. Alternatively, on a light coloured shirt it might be possible to put a copy of the design underneath to align the pieces, depending on the fabric thickness.

Using a craft knife or small scissors, cut out any holes in the middle of letters first. I usually also cut out any tricky curves with a craft knife first, and then cut the bigger bits with scissors, but cut out the design in whatever way works best for you.

Don’t forget about any tittles (the dots on tops of the letter i).

Affix the adhesive to the shirt

Position the design where you think you want it on the shirt.

If you have bridging gaps, first use the very edge of the iron to stick down just the middle of each letter. 

Then, with small sharp scissors, cut out each of the bridging pieces. Again, don’t forget the ones holding the tittles. Make sure all the little bits are brushed off the shirt’s surface.

Put a piece of non-stick paper over the entirety of the design and press the iron firmly over the whole thing. Check that the adhesive has been fully affixed, then peel the backing paper off of each letter to be foiled once it has cooled down.

Adding the foil

Lay the foil over the design coloured side up. If you are using nail foil it might not cover it entirely, but that’s fine, you can do it in multiple passes. Likewise if you want to use multiple colours; you can put different foils over each letter all at once, or, like I have done, leave the backing paper on some letters for now and do it in a couple of goes.

Put your non-stick paper over the top again and press the iron firmly over the whole thing. Let it cool before removing the foil – this will stop the Heat n Bond from attaching to the foil and plastic in places and getting pulled off accidentally. Pull off the foil starting from an unstuck corner – the foil itself should remain stuck to the design where the adhesive is, leaving you with a part clear/part scrap piece of transfer foil.

If necessary, repeat the process so that any missed parts of the design are covered. If you are using more than one colour of foil, put a little piece of non-stick paper over what you’ve already done, as sometimes the foil wants to stick to other foiled parts - not always, but unless you’re going for that look, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Soften the design

At this point, the transferred design will likely still be very shiny and stiff, though it may have areas of different textures if it was done in two goes, because the non-stick paper is less smooth than the plastic backing of the foil. This can be homogenised by putting the non-stick paper over the entire design once it’s finished and ironing it again, though it will still remain fairly stiff.

To really soften it, give it a quick pass with the iron under the non-stick paper and then remove it while the design is still a bit warm, though not hot. 

Stretch the entire thing across the width of the design bit by bit, so that a crack forms in the design along each column of the knit fabric. 

This will distort the shape of the design and the fabric, but if you then stretch it lengthways it will restore some of its shape. Finally, lay it out on the ironing space again and flatten it out by hand, trying to restore its shape as much as possible. 

Using the non-stick paper, press it one last time, but this time, the non-stick paper will probably stick to the shirt, as cracking the foil will have exposed some of the interfacing, and pulling it off hot will take some of the foil with it, so leave it till it's totally cold. However, that cracking will also cause the interfacing to melt into those gaps during the final ironing, which is what keeps the design soft and pliable, and prevents big cracks in the design in the future.

It should now be back to its original shape, but with a softness and drape not much stiffer than the fabric itself. 

On my shirt I then decided, since I had a lovely yellow gold to go with the pink and rose golds, to add a flourish at the bottom. Because it's long and skinny it shows much better how cracking the foil softens it up.

These shirts are totally machine washable, though it usually will lose a little bit of foil over time just like commercially available shirts do. I did a christmas one to wear to work last year though, and it would have been washed about 15 times and it still looks presentable. The design isn't iron-able without something over it, but what kind of crazy irons t-shirts?

The foil is rainbow, but I cut it up to go in different directions.

I'll mainly be using this method to make shirts that are either in-jokes or quiet, non-overt political statements.

it's hard to read there but tomorrow's shirts are 'reject fascism' and 'will punch nazis'

Wait, did I say NON-overt? That's not right, I'm doing two whole topics on social movements and activism this semester, since the world is falling apart, and I need shirts that let everyone know I'm ready to cut a bitch.

If anyone wants the designs I've made/used so far, let me know.

The Lattice Quilt - Cutting and Assembly Instructions

Having now done this quilt 3 times, I'm fairly confident that it's all sorted. The first one I was hacking up my fabric randomly, making it up as I went along, the second time was a bit better, and the third time it all came together flawlessly. The instructions for a quilt cut from yardage come to approximately 135cm, one made using a layer cake will be approximately 155cm, with a narrower border than shown.

If you are cutting all the fabrics yourself, first you will need 36 rectangles measuring 20x10cm (4x8") I cut these from 18 fabrics, and used the rest of the width of the fabric to cut a strip to make a scrappy binding, but it could be done with less fabrics - if you have twelve prints cut three of each, if you have nine, cut four from each.

From 1.8m (2 yards) of solid background fabric, first cut across the width of the fabric five strips 20cm (8") wide, then cut these strips into 25 squares, five across the width of the fabric.

Next, cut 2 strips 30cm (12") wide, then cut these into 6 squares, 3 across the width of the fabric. From the edges of the strips, cut six 10cm (4") squares.

From the remainder of the fabric, cut four squares of 16cm (6.5") and six more 10cm (4") squares.

Finally, cut your 30cm (12") squares and your 16cm (6.5") squares into HSTs.

If you are using layer cakes, you will need at least 18 squares of print (cut in half) and 34 squares of solid - 25 remain whole, six are cut in half into twelve HSTs and three are quartered into 5" squares.

Lay your prints out or up on your design wall to get a layout you like. I just put mine randomly.

Add the little squares in the corners.

Add the big squares in the gaps, as well as one at the outside of every print.

Sew the pieces together into diagonal rows and press the seams. There will be two pieces at either edge that wont be sewn yet.

Sew the rows into pairs with their neighbour of the same length. The centre row will remain on it's own. Press the seams

Attach a large HST to the ends of each row, with the right angle matching the edge of the printed fabric. There will be a slight overhang on the edge of the solid fabric. Trim this off after pressing. If you are using Layer Cakes, the opposite will happen - the triangle will not reach to the edge of the strip. The jagged edges left over by the original squares will be trimmed down after the top is completed.

Sew all your rows together and press the seams. If you are using Layer Cakes, trim the points from the edges - the squares in the corners should contain enough fabric to be trimmed to right angles at the same line as the low edges of the HSTs.

Sew the remaining four HSTs to the corners.

Tada! Very simple, Very quick quilt top.

I haven't yet made a back or quilted mine, but I'll update with some photos when I do.

Pavement Maths

Well, after dying occasionally for the last few weeks, I think my laptop is doing it for good tonight, which means I'll be taking it for a visit to it's Uncle Steven tomorrow. My money's on it either being the wiring in the swivel or the graphics card. But I've never been that good with hardware, so I'll leve it for the expert to pull it apart and have a look.

In the meantime I have stolen mum's netbook. My fingernails are too long for the little keys, and I keep making typos.

Because I didn't want to deal with the trauma I finished off the green pavement quilt.

This one, like the pink one, is about 140cm square. It's couch blanket sized, a size I really like. It's quick, and it fits easily under my machine.

But having had a request for a slightly larger one, tonight I did some maths. Imperial maths too, and math that comes with pre-cut options. I'm not going to give assembly instructions for this quilt, just shopping and cutting instructions.

First up, you'll need two large print fabrics, at a useable 20.5" - this means about 55cm. One of these, cut into two 20.5" squares, the other, cut across two rectangles 20.5x9.5, and then cut in the other direction two rectangles the same size. This way your prints will all face the same direction.

Next up you'll need 5 fabrics measuring a useable 9.5" - about 25cm. From each of these cut four 9.5" squares, and cut any leftover fabric (from your large prints too) into 2.5" squares for your corner stones. Alternatively, two charm packs sewn into four-patch blocks should give you about the same thing (you'll need 20 squares) and you can use any leftover charm squares cut into quarters for your corner stones.

Finally, for the boring old sashing, you'll need twelve strips 2.5" wide - either use a jelly roll or cut up about 80cm of fabric. You'll get four pieces of sashing 9.5" long from each strip, for a total of 48 bits. 

You'll need 23 corner stones: if you haven't got enough from your leftovers (it depends on if your fabric is a useable 44" wide - I find a lot aren't) then you might need to ferret about in your scrap box - it's a good chance to get rid of some really little bits.

Use the picture above for an idea on the layout of your 9.5" squares or put them wherever you find aesthetically pleasing. My only rule with the corner stones was to not have any of the same fabrics touching, other than that I went with what I thought looked nice.

This should end up about 65" square - if you want a bit bigger then add sashing or just a border to the outside.

I should probably have split this into two posts...

Firstly, I'd like to apologise for any aneurisms had on Sunday morning. When I pressed the publish post button, blogger told me that it had been scheduled for 5 minutes away, and I was too lazy to go back and make it post straight away. Then I fell asleep, without checking it had uploaded, and got a bit sad the next day that noone had said anything, but I figured it was just because I was being a grumpy bum, and it probably didn't deserve commenting on anyway. Then, when I went in to correct a typo on last night's post, I realised it was still there, labeled as a draft. I backdated the post and made sure it actually uploaded, and went to bed. I'm very sorry Helen, it was Blogger's fault, I promise.

Anyway, tonight, having bought myself a new cutting mat, I got started on my next mingle quilt. I hadn't realised it, but it's been ages since I chopped fat quarters up into neat little squares as a precursor to making blocks one at a time.

I gotta say, it feels inefficient. And after all that time pondering as I tried to iron out a not quite flat bit of strip piecing if it was actually any faster, what with having to do more cutting afterwards and all, I'm thinking it doesn't matter. Cutting (fabric) for two hours is almost enough to make you start cutting (emo style)

Still, my initial squares are all done now, so at least from here on out everything is perfect and regular.

This quilt design is odd, by my standards, since it actually contains no maths. None. At all. You cut four squares, the biggest you can from a fat quarter - I've gone 22cm, but honestly, there's no reason even to conform to whole numbers. Then you pick a point a little way from one corner along an edge, say, 5cm or so. Then you cut from that point to the middle-ish of the opposite side. You remove the small bit of fabric and go from the ghost point that would have been the 5cm or so (same as last time) from the corner in the other direction, and you go to the middle-ish opposite again. The only hard part is your ghost corner, but if you get a piece of paper, draw both lines, then cut one, and then the other, wallah! Templates. Then all you've got to do is shuffle around your insides and your outsides until you've got a design you like and sew it all back together, kite shape to short wedge, then attaching the long wedge to the side, lining up the wide bit with the top of the kite so that your overhang is the narrow bit, which you can then chop off without much waste. Doesn't even matter what your seam allowance is, so long as it's constant. Pretty much a perfect first quilt.

But it's not my first, it's going to be my 50th. Because, dirty little secret, this one was #38.5 - the quilt with no number*.

That's Graham. He's like a ninja, and it's very rare for he and I to cross paths.

This is the quilt I made for the Two Tyred Tutorial, and I'm glad I finished it on the weekend we actually won (please forward your insults regarding our Round 1 performance via the comments box) The colours above are the colours of the Hawthorn Hawks, an Australian Rules Footy team. Any non-Autralian readers should declare their support before Shay tries to woo you to the Adelaide Crows.

Anyway, as well as posting the instruction for this one, here's a quick little thing on how I usually bind quilts, when I'm not boring myself silly with hand sewing them on. I usually call this double wide binding, and it looks best on quilts that are straight line quilted on the machine. Go read this, and then I'll explain my changes.


Firstly, cut your binding 1/2 an inch wider than she says, or 1/2 inch wider than you usually would. I like 9cm, but I also put my needle to the far left so I get a wider binding.

Instead of pinning from the back, put your pins in the front, right up against where the batting folds back on itself. Try to keep a fairly constant amount of excess binding beyond where your pin passes through to the back, you want it to be a quarter inch or so.

Use a zipper foot - one of the ones that has the metal in the middle and open sides. This lets you get really really close to the edge - you want to be stitching into the ditch. Once you've gone the whole way around, tie off your threads.

Flip the quilt over. There should be a quarter inch or so of overhang to your binding. In some places it might be less, in some places a little bit more. Now sew that down from the back - when it gets narrower, you go in so you don't miss any of it, which you might have if you were sewing it blind from the front. I tend to not go out too far even on the bits where it's a bit wider - it makes for a straighter finish on the front if you only veer off in one direction.

Once you've done your full loop, tie off your threads.

The quilt from the front will look like this, with a narrow binding and a second line of quilting about a quarter inch from the edge, just like all the actual quilted lines where the seams have been echoed.

The back will look like this - binding a quarter inch or so wider than it is on the front, double sewn.

That's not brilliant explaining, I know, but despite the fact that this is getting published at 2.45, my body clock still thinks it's nearly 4am.

Damn You Daylight Savings!


*So we're disregarding it with regards to both my "finish half the WIPs before #50" and "do that one you've been gunna-ing since the beginning as #50" pledges.

Make your own Monster Mash.

The night is young (ish) but this isn't a proper post, it's just some bits and pieces of monsters. Heads, Bodies, Arms, Legs and Horns, most of which are interchangeable. The pictures are big - pretty much A4 size, so they will all fit together as they are, but feel free to scale, stretch or skew to your hearts content. Add extra arms or legs, use a head as a body or vice versa. Monsters are meant to be unique.

There's also a few mouths at the bottom, but all you need is something round of about the right size and to add some teeth. Give them as many or as few eyes as you want to too.

When I make these monsters, I sew and stuff any extremities (arms, legs, horns etc, and don't stuff your body pieces super firm, it's much easier if they're still squishy) and then sew them into the seams of the main body part - you line your body pieces up right side facing and tuck the pieces in so that the open end of the arm or leg is sewn closed between the edge seam of the body pieces. Sometimes this can be a bit difficult. If the arms extend into the crotch area (they often do) then sew the arms into the sides and also down and across the bottom of the legs/feet, then stop, shift the arms so they're more in the legs (they need to lay as flat as possible while you're sewing them into the seams, otherwise they end up pointing in all sorts of weird directions) and then sew around the crotch. If you have arms or legs crossing over, sew them one at a time with the other one shoved out of the way.

Because of the already stuffed bits you then have to turn out, make sure you leave a bigger turning hole to fit them through. This also goes for the use of big glass eyes.

Clip your curves. it doesn't matter so much with the outward ones, like at the ends of hands and feet, but for your inner ones, like necks and crotches, it's really really important. Really.

Most importantly, have fun with them. It doesn't even matter if they have differently aligned arms or one leg shorter than the other. It's a monster, and they're like that, you know.

Should just point out, that when you click on the pictures, they should open up to be full size JPEGs, about 200kb each. Right click and save or print or whatever.

It's here. (or there-->)

Blogger's insistent repositioning of photos to the top of a post for no apparent reason is a major hassle when you're trying to write up a tutorial. Nonetheless, I persevered, battling through congestion, brainfarts and repeated trips into town to pick up the drunkards, to produce the instructions for a miniature version of the Stairways to Heaven quilt, with a completely re-jigged bit on which fabrics go with which. If you like to label things and be told exactly what to do, use the big one. If you want to go with the flow and pair your fabrics in a more natural, organic fashion, these are the instructions for you.

This quilt top only needs 20cm each of 6 fabrics - a quarter yard is plenty if you buy in the American fashion. Of course, because of this it only comes out baby sized, but it makes for a damn stylishly rugged up baby.

Over the next week or so I suspect I'll come up with a bajillion different versions of these two quilts - Today alone I've decided that it would be easy to make with some funky jelly rolls and a solid, and I'm considering doing something with my rainbow of bright solid fabrics and perhaps a black.

I've cut and strip pieced a match to this one in brown, pink and orange, but when I realised it was taking me three times as long as usual to get even the blue, green and brown one done, I gave up my plan of making them simultaneously.

Still, I got one all done and that's enough, so here it is. The Baby Sized Stairways to Heaven Quilt. For future reference, it's over to your right under Pages.

A quick note: it says to use straight cuts but so long as you've double checked it's at least 21 inches on the long side and 15 on the short, you could use a fat quarter. I've had some that vary wildly though, so check first.

Stairways to Heaven Quit top Pattern

So here we go with pattern number two: The Stairways to Heaven quilt top. This is a pattern for the top only.

I have made this with two designs of fabric in 3 colours each.

Final size, if you make it using the imperial measurements, is 52.5" by 60" so it's a decent lap blankie or full size cot quilt. It uses 1/2 yard of each of the 6 fabrics, and has 4 blocks left over. Other than that, you'll only have some selvedges and ratty ends remaining. These first measurements use a quarter inch seam.

So, you take your 6 half yards and cut them into strips selvedge to selvedge. You'll need two strips measuring 5.5" wide and two of 3" wide from each fabric (there should be less than an inch left over)

Then, you take your strips and sort them like this. Assign each colour a number (I have gone Pink -1, Green -2 and Blue -3) then pick one design as (a) (spots/dark in the picture) and the other as (b) (stripes/lighter in the picture)

Pair:
1a wide with 2b narrow.
3b wide with 2a narrow.
3a wide with 1b narrow.
2b wide with 1a narrow.
2a wide with 3b narrow.
1b wide with 3a narrow.

Strip piece them all together then press your seams flat (doesn't matter which way, since these seams wont connect with one another).

These are actually in upside down order - oops.

From each strip cut 5 squares 8" long, so you have 10 of each.

Arrange the squares as shown in the picture. If you keep them in the order as above, you should be able to start with your first pair (1a+2b) in the bottom left corner and work your way up from there in the above order.

Diagonals 3, 4, 5 and 6 will each have one more square than necessary, which can be used for piecing on the back or to make a 15" square pillow.

Assemble the squares into a quilt top.

Quilt however you like - I plan on quilting straight lines either side of the main seams and on the large-rectangle side of the block piecing, but do whatever floats your boat.

If you live in metricland, like me, you'll need 45cm of each fabric; cut each one into two strips 8cm wide and 13.5cm wide, then after sewing cut them into 20cm squares. If you sew all this the same as the above instructions but with 7.5mm seams, you should get the same quilt but about 4cm smaller each way.

Good luck!

Mt first ever quilt pattern (that I've written down)

So here it is... In Inches...

Yeah, I know most of you probably do your quilts in inches anyway. Certainly, even though  I had already sorted it in metric and I was just converting it and writing up the pattern, the math seemed super easy. Fractions instead of decimal points seems to work well - ¼ is easier than .25 to math out.


So, this pattern is in inches, uses a quarter inch seam allowance, and should be made by everyone because it's bloody brilliant except that the top doesn't work well with large prints. Stripes will all point in the same direction, though if you want to rotate every second block so you don't have to match as many points, that can look cool too.

This is the pattern for what has been made as both the "Two Tyred" quilts and the "Awesome Quilt" series.  At it's core, it is a lap quilt, 36 by 45 inches, that is made with 4 yards of 44"/110cm wide fabric (including backing and binding) in as little as two colours. Actually, you don't even need 4 yards of fabric, you officially need 27½" (70cm) each of two colours for the front, and then 32" (82cm) of backing with an extra 15" (38cm) of contrast backing and 15" more for the binding (assuming 3" wide binding, you'll need more if you like it wider)

That's 117"/3½ yards/3m all up. Even if you play it safe and get some extra to accommodate wonky edged cuts you can easily do it with 1.75m of each fabric. But since a lot of fabric is sold by the yard, go for 4 yards and add to your scrap box.

Also, you can mix and match and add more fabrics. Each of those five measurements (27½", 27½", 32", 15", 15") can be different colours, or you can make the accent on the back the same as the binding (four colours.) If you want three colours, make the binding and the accent or the main piece of backing be one of the front fabrics. The two fabric version has the two colours on the front, with one of the fabrics also being the binding and the accent on the back and the other being the body of the backing. Or however you want it.

That got confusing, even to me. This might help:

Two Colours - 2 yards of each fabric

Three Colours - 2 yards of one, 1 yard of another, 1 yard of the third

Four Colours - 1 yard of each

Five Colours - 1 yard of three and a half yard of two

Of course, this was actually designed because I had two fabrics that I loved that didn't go with anything else. So it's the perfect cheapie quilt, because not only does it use so little, but you can buy those last two (three/four/five) straggly fabrics in a range at clearance price. Hurrah!

Okay, so what you have to do once you get your fabric is chop it up. If you've got 5 colours you've probably got the right amounts of each, but if not, cut the 27½ inches. This is exactly the amount you will need to fit the strips, so you might want to cut a bit extra in case of wonk.

Aligning with the selvedge, cut two strips 5½" wide, four strips 2¾" wide and two strips 10" wide from each of your two colours. There should only really be the selvedge remaining on either side. Cut your 10" strips into pieces 2¾" wide. You should get 10 from each strip, pretty much exactly.

The top ones are folded up strips - I only have a short ruler.

Sew the 2¾" wide strips onto either side of the 5½" wide opposite fabric, so you will have four 10" strips in two opposite variants. Press your seams.

There's two of each.

Cut your new 3-piece strip into pieces 5½" wide - you should get 5 from each, again, pretty much exactly.

There's 10 in each pile.

Now sew your 10" by 2¾" strips to either side of your 10" by 5½" wide blocks, so they become a square of one fabric in a box of the other fabric. Press your new seams, and trim if necessary (if your quarter inch seams are correct, it should be fine)

Ten of each again.

Join your blocks together in a grid to finish the top. I rotate one colour lot so that I don't have to match the extra seam, but if you have a striped or "right way up" fabric pattern, you can leave them all the same way.

For the back, cut your backing accent fabric into two 7½ inch strips. Lay your main fabric so that the selvedge is at one of the long sides. Lay one of your strips of accent fabric across it at a diagonal, so that the inside points line up with where the edges of your front piece are.

Cut either side of the accent piece, so that your main piece is now in three parts. Trim the ends of your accent pieces so they are straight with the sides of the quilt.

Use the little bits you chopped off to trim the other accent piece.

Sew the accent pieces into the main piece. Trim your main piece down to match the accent fabrics and your quilt top.

Quilt however you want. I do straight lines on either side of my main seams and on the inside of the inside seams of the blocks, but do whatever floats your boat.

Trim your quilt to a nice neat rectangle, chop your last bit of fabric into strips for binding and finish it up.

POSTSCRIPT

Personally, I think the two lines on the back look a bit like the quilt's been run over, and since it can be made in as little as two colours, I like the name "Two Tyred"

Whenever I've made it with a batik and matching solid I've given it a name with the word Awesome in it - there's the Pretty Awesome quilt (pink and rainbow) and the Awesome Quilt of Awesomeness (black and rainbow)

I have made this above as a sports quilt; if your team has two colours like mine (Go Hawks) you can do it as is, but if they have 3 and you want an even colour spread get 20 inches each of 3 colours for the top and you'll have 1 block to spare. Put colour (a) inside colour (b), colour (b) inside colour (c) and colour (c) inside colour (a). I think a big number of your favourite player would look cool as an alternative backing, or you could piece together an image of their gurney (This is especially easy for Aussie rules as they're pretty much just a rectangle with armholes and a collar)

The metric numbers I usually use are 14, 7 and 25, which is pretty much the same as the imperial measurements.