Have you ever been in this situation? You've just designed the most adorable block. It looks just like a highland cow, but it's traditionally pieced.
The only problem is that it's got 10,000 friggin' little pieces and steps. How on earth are you going to write a pattern for this thing that is not completely painful to read?
Contents:
Here's what we're talking about:
This is a picture-pieced block. It's an S shape, but it's got a lot of pieces and steps to get you there.
For instance, you might start with this top piece. You've got to do a stitch and flip on one corner and another one on the other corner. Then you do the same thing in the middle with the same rectangles, but you put the corners on in a slightly different method. And then you've got to sew a rectangle and square together. Those are the same squares as are in the corners, but there are different steps to put those pieces in.
If you're writing this with traditional methods where you're naming the dimensions every single time you refer to a piece, it just gets out of control very easily.
Another example of this would be a square in a square block. You start with one square in the middle and add triangles to each side of it, building out this pretty cool block, to be honest, but you've got five pieces of fabric in four different colors that you've got to keep track of, and they're all different dimensions.
Labeling
The trick to making patterns like this readable is to label each individual piece. Every cut gets its separate label. You put those labels into your cutting table and then refer to the labels and not the dimensions throughout the instructions.
How to label your pieces
You can do this a couple of different ways. I like to put a label column in my cutting table. Every single individual cut gets its individual label. This prevents you from having to repeat labels for each size.
Label cuts A through Z, if you have less than 26 pieces. I have been in a situation where I've run out of the alphabet before. In that instance, you can double up (AA, BB, etc.) or use the fabric letter and then the number instead (i.e. A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.).
You could also just put the label in each individual cut at the end in parentheses. Like this. But, again, this takes up room in the cutting table and forces you to repeat labels for each size.
This labeling scheme works really well if you're making a lot of the same cuts from different fabrics. For instance, a 2 1/2" x 5" rectangle of fabric A would be A1. And if you're making that same cut, a 2 1/2" x 5" rectangle for fabric B, it would be B1. The number corresponds to the dimensions, while the letter corresponds to the fabric.
Don't forget to label the cuts on your construction diagrams also. This is a REALLY important visual step to help your reader see where each piece is going to go. It can also help with fabric planning.
Benefits of Labeling
The beauty of labeling is that when you go to write the instructions, instead of referring to the dimensions, you refer to the label, and that's it. This can shorten your pattern considerably.
Traditional Instructions
If you're writing the traditional way where you're referring to dimensions, here's how kind of the first step of assembling a square in a square block would read:
Take (2) 4" x 4" triangles of background fabric and attach them to the left and right side of (1) 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" square of fabric A.
Are you asleep yet? This is awful to read. It doesn't flow at all, and there's a bunch of extra information that you really don't need because you've already cut the squares and triangles. The dimensions aren't useful at that point, you just need to know which square to take.
Labeled Instructions
If you use labels for your pieces of fabric, here's how that same step would read:
Take (2) D triangles and attach them to the left and right sides of (1) A square.
Boom. That's it. How much easier is that to read?
It gives you just enough information—the critical information you need to know to make the block without all of this other stuff that you're ultimately just going to skim through. Every time you make your customer skim, they're likely to miss something important, which is not good.
More Concise Patterns
The other beauty of this is that you need about half as many words to say the same thing. That leads to a shorter pattern which is a very good thing!
If you've ever tried to reformat your pattern into a paper booklet that you're going to get printed for selling in quilt shops, real estate is SUPER limited. The more pages you have, the more money it's going to cost to get printed that you don't recover when you sell the pattern.
If you can shorten your steps and trim useless words, you have more space on the page and more real estate to work with in a paper pattern, and that is a very good thing.
Minimizing Errors
It also minimizes the opportunity for you to make a mistake when you refer to a dimension. For instance, if in the cutting table it's 4" x 4", and then you refer to it as 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" in the quilt pattern, that's going to confuse people. That's a typo.
If you're not referring to those dimensions at all, there's far less opportunity to make a mistake, and that's a really good thing.
When to Use Labeling
Now, obviously, you don't need to use this every time you write a quilt pattern. There are some instances where it’s more necessary than others.
For instance, if you're doing an HST quilt and you're cutting the literally same size of squares out of five different fabrics, yeah, okay, You probably don't need to label those fabrics—that's going to be a little bit overkill. But if you've got five or so different cuts of a couple of different fabrics, it's probably not necessary, but it certainly can't hurt.
If you've got seven or more cuts, to me it's required after that point. Otherwise, things just get out of control.
For me, every time I write patterns, I typically use this method because I tend to write complicated patterns. Even if I'm writing something simple, though, I will still label my fabrics just because that's what my customers are used to and it makes my patterns feel more consistent. It's easier to just get into the habit of using it.
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